


White Lies

by orphan_account



Series: Mythomania [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, Crying, Depression, Dysphoria, Eating Disorders, England being a horrible person, F/M, Hetalia rarepairs, Hurt/Comfort, I promise there's going to be a happy ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Literally lots of crying, Mental Instability, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Sex Trafficking, Trans Character, Transphobia, body image issues, but mostly a lot of hurt, especially when it comes to Iszabella and Gil's relationship, general terrible treatment of a trans person, past trauma, platonic lietpol, probably pretty OOC, pruspol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-01 17:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15148430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: I'm just gonna be really upfront and say if you're easily triggered, probably stay away from this fic. Also if you can't handle mature subject matter dealing with trans people, transphobia, sex trafficking, forced sex work, and eating disorders, probably don't read this. All possible triggers are in the tags.Iszabella's best friend finally forces her to get help with her eating disorder and PTSD after an accident leaves her with a broken arm and shows Toris just how unstable her health really is. Her new roommate helps her open up about her traumatic past and she finds a place for him in her heart.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is starting as a little passion project because no matter how hard I try to leave the Hetalia fandom, I just can't, so I'll put my creativity to good use and add to the teeny weeny collection of fics about Trans!Poland as well as put like one PrusPol fic out into the world. It would mean a ton if everyone who read this left some constructive criticism in the comments, since I'm really trying hard to make my writing the best it can be. Thank y'all so much for reading!

“Feliks, do you know why you’re here?”

 

“Can you like, use my real name  _ please _ ?”

 

“Hospital records say your name is Feliks, so that’s what I’m going to have to refer to you as. If there’s an issue, you can take it up with the head doctor,” the man sighed, picking up the stack of papers in front of him and flipping through it again, as though his actions could do something to support his words. He’d had no training, no briefing, not even a warning about this sort of case and frankly, he wasn’t prepared to deal with it. 

 

“There is an issue. My name is Iszabella. I’m supposed to be in the women’s psychiatric ward, and your records are bullshit. If you would just let me talk to Toris, he can bring my records over here, which say my name was legally changed to Iszabella,” 

 

“We’ll get in touch with Toris as soon as it is advisable that we do so. Right now we need to focus on your treatment and-”

 

Iszabella stood up, leaning forward and grabbing the papers right out of the therapist’s hands. She sat back down and started going through them. “Here,” she shoved a crumpled sheet of paper towards the therapist. He sighed and read it over, before turning it around so Iszabella could read what he was pointing as.

 

“It says you claim to have gender identity disorder, but you have never been given a diagnosis or even seen a therapist about it. It also says the only evidence of attempting to transition is elevated estrogen levels, most likely from illegally obtained hormones. Do you know how dangerous it can be to use black-market drugs?”

 

She’d gotten that talk before. When Toris had found out she wasn’t getting estrogen legally, he’d yelled at her until she cried and tried to convince her to go to a therapist and continue her transition the safe way. Obviously, she hadn’t listened.

 

“It doesn’t matter to you, though, does it? I could totally give myself hormone shots until they poison me and kill me, and you’d still be calling me Feliks and saying I can’t transfer to the women’s ward. You’re saying that because it’s your job,” she tried to keep her voice authoritative, tried to show that the therapist wasn’t getting to her at all, but there was pain in it. 

 

The therapist sighed and leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands over his stomach. Iszabella glanced back towards the door, and she heard that horrible voice again.

 

“Do you know why you’re here?” It was more demanding this time.

 

She couldn’t bear to make eye contact with him, instead staring at the floor as she shook her head. That was a lie.

 

“Okay, do you know why you spent three weeks being in the main hospital after being admitted, or why you have to wear this?” he leaned forward and tapped the pink cast covering Iszabella’s arm up past her elbow. She flinched away from him, before shaking her head in response. Another lie.

 

“I know you can answer these questions. We’re going to try again now,” the therapist’s voice had turned impatient, almost angry. “Do you know why you are here?”

 

“No, but I know there are other therapists working here and that I would totally rather have one of them be asking me these questions than you,”

 

“That’s not a choice you get to make. Please answer my question,”

 

“Fuck you,”

 

“I think that’s enough for today,” The therapist stood up abruptly and Iszabella followed. She was only a little shorter than the man, but it still made her uneasy. Men like him made her uneasy. “I’ll take you to your room. Your roommate can get you used to the routine,” he grabbed her arm, right above where the cast ended and there was a still-healing bruise spread over her skin. This caused her to yelp with pain and forced her to keep up with him as he walked her to her room.

 

Open doors lined the hall, each one with a large window covering nearly half of it. They got no privacy, but Iszabella didn’t care. She’d been without privacy for much of her past, she could deal with it again now.

 

“Gilbert, we got you a roommate.  _ His  _ name is  _ Feliks _ ,” he emphasized the words, squeezing tighter to Iszabella’s arm so she knew she couldn’t do anything about it, at least not until he was gone. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,”

 

The grip on Iszabella’s arm relaxed and she spun around as the therapist left, watching him walk back down the hallway. When he was far enough away that it would be useless for him to turn around and go back to the room, Iszabella pulled up as much courage as she could and yelled after him, “ spal w piekle, chory kurwa!” before turning back and tentatively walking inside the room.

 

“What did you just say to him?” 

 

Iszabella’s eyes landed on a man sitting on top of a bed, a journal in his lap. His skin and hair were the same shade of white as the walls and floor and sheets in the room.

 

Suddenly, she didn’t want to answer his question. In fact, she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. The bed that was meant to belong to her was too close to his, and it made her stomach clench with uneasiness. There was a bathroom connected to the room, and though it didn’t have a door or a shower curtain for her to hide behind, it was better than nothing. She tried looking as nonchalant as possible as she slipped into the room, before sitting down on the floor in the farthest corner, forcing herself to think of the kinds of things that comforted her.

 

“What, do you hate me already?”

 

The voice was the same volume, as the walls between them weren’t all that thick and there was no door to really separate them. Iszabella refused to answer again. She didn’t hate  _ him _ , she didn’t know him at all, but she hated the thought of having to sleep in a bed not five feet from his. She hated the idea of sharing a bathroom with him. She hated that it was inevitable that she’d have to change clothes in the same room as him and he’d probably see her body. 

 

And she hated most men, especially if they were taller or stronger than her, because those types had an easier time taking advantage.

 

Iszabella heard footsteps coming toward her, and she pressed against the wall, her legs curling against her chest and sandwiching her broken arm protectively. It felt like her heart was going to burst from how hard it was pounding.

 

“The first night’s always the hardest, and that therapist’s a dick. He treats everyone like that,”

 

Iszabella wished she could disappear. There was someone standing over her, she was powerless now. Subconsciously she knew that her roommate only wanted to help, that he wasn’t going to kick her when she was down, but it was instinct that overpowered rationality in this situation.

 

“Feliks… that’s your name, right?”

 

“Don’t call me that!” her voice turned to a snarl and the fear in her eyes changed to anger. She forced herself to stand up, forced herself to stop being so vulnerable. It didn’t help much, Gilbert towered over her.

 

“Then what do you want me to call you?”

 

Iszabella didn’t want to answer his questions, but this wasn’t something she could just nod or shake her head in response to. She’d already deflected enough of his questions and was worried he was getting impatient or angry with her. Dealing with that would be much worse than just having to choke out a few words. She swallowed, her name feeling stuck to her throat; so much different than how proudly she’d said it, again and again, after leaving the courthouse when she’d gotten it changed. “Iszabella,” she mumbled, and there was no confidence that came when she said it, no happy affirmation. 

 

She knew she’d just put herself at risk. A trans woman who was small and weak and alone was no match against someone like Gilbert who was tall and looked like he could lift her up with no problem. She barely tipped the scales at 95 pounds.

 

“That’s a girl’s name…” everything started to click together for Gilbert. He understood suddenly why the therapist had emphasized the wrong name and the wrong pronoun, and why Iszabella had reacted the way she had. “Shit, I get what’s going on,” he stared at the woman in front of him, at how fragile she seemed to be and the bruises on her arm that seemed to be getting worse from the way the therapist had grabbed her. “Come on, I’ll go back there with you and get you transferred,” his voice wasn’t exactly gentle, but it was calm and at least Iszabella didn’t feel immediately threatened.

 

Gilbert was the one who led the way, Iszabella following a few feet behind. It was a short walk to the office, just down the hall and to the first door on the left, but to Iszabella, it felt like forever, drawn out by fear. She protectively placed her hand over the bruise on her arm as though expecting the therapist to grab her there again.

 

“Why the fuck did you put a girl with me? She belongs in the women’s ward across the hall,”

 

“Girl? His records say he’s a boy. And we already did the paperwork to assign him as your roommate. You’ll just have to deal with it, sorry,” the therapist’s eyes met Gilbert’s and he could tell there was nothing apologetic about what he’d said.

 

“But-”

 

“No buts. His papers say he’s male, he doesn’t move until that changes. Which I doubt it will, as long as he’s still injecting himself with black market hormones,” the words caused physical pain to Iszabella and she leaned against the wall outside the office, shaking as she tried to steady her breathing. He just didn’t get it, did he. She wanted to scream, to tell that idiot therapist that she had no choice, that when she’d started she couldn’t afford anything else and it would be too painful to stop just so she could go to a real therapist until they decided she could go back on prescription hormones. The words felt caught in her throat, though, and she just numbly followed Gilbert back to the room- their room.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter has the first one of Iszabella's flashbacks, and it's not overly descriptive but it could be possibly triggering, so be careful! There's also some super general references to rape.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who's left kudos and the person who bookmarked! And thanks a ton to everyone who's been reading! I realized I never specified an update schedule, and I don't really often go by them since I can have like a few days of free time to crank out chapters then all of a sudden be gone for like a month, so just bear with me and my odd update schedule. For this week I'm trying for a chapter every other day at least!

_ The first night’s always the hardest. The first night’s always the hardest. The first night’s always the hardest. _

 

Iszabella found that Gilbert’s words from before were imprinted into her memory. She’d spent the rest of day in the room, alone after her roommate had realized his company was doing more harm than good and left. Every few minutes, a nurse came by and checked on her, but none of them actually bothered her until dinnertime.

 

She’d flat out refused to go to the cafeteria, so they’d brought a salad to her and tried to get her to eat it. When she refused that, too, one of them made a check mark on a clipboard and they finally left her alone.

 

It was after lights-out that everything soured.

 

When she’d moved in with her best friend, Toris, he’d given her the bed and taken the couch for himself. Almost every night, though, Iszabella had found herself begging her friend to sleep with her, so she didn’t have to go through her nightmares alone. She’d had them for years, since  _ it  _ had begun. They’d gotten worse with time, until she couldn’t sleep through the night and would sometimes start having a panic attack when she awoke. Eventually Toris had given up on sleeping on the couch and just moved to the bed permanently.

 

The three weeks Iszabella had spent in the hospital itself had been horribly difficult. She’d been allowed to have Toris visit during the day, and he’d spent at least an hour every day with her, but nights were spent alone and she’d be stuck- forced to go through the nightmares alone and deal with the aftermath. 

 

Now, she was forced into a room with someone else, someone who she didn’t want to see her this vulnerable. At first, she couldn’t sleep, not with the sound of Gilbert snoring and shifting every once in awhile next to her, and the fear that once her eyes were closed, someone would take advantage of her. Not necessarily her roommate, he didn’t seem like the type to do that, at least from what she inferred from their brief interactions. But the ward was teeming with men who could easily overpower her, and that was what scared her.

 

These thoughts brought up memories, the same kind that would come up in her nightmares. She was awake, though, and she subconsciously knew that all had happened years ago and she was relatively safe, but she was thinking irrationally and suddenly it was all around her, sucking her in.

 

_ Iszabella bit down on her lower lip until she felt the skin break and blood seep into her mouth. There was blood between her legs, mixing with something else that she couldn’t bear to bring up the word for, there was blood on the insides of her thighs where she’d scratched them raw. She felt dirty, disgusting. Suddenly she was swimming in blood, choking on the bitter, metallic taste. She was drowning, the thick liquid pulling her in like a vacuum. She was spinning into it, screaming into nothing. _

 

Gilbert’s sleep was interrupted by loud sobbing. He was used to being awoken during the night, from other patients screaming or crying, from doors creaking open, from nurses walking down the hallway to do their rounds, but this was closer and there were words. He tried to figure out what was being said, but it didn’t sound like English or German or any of the languages he knew little snippets of.

 

“Nie! Nie! Przestań, zejdź ze mnie!”

 

He sat up and flicked a switch so the reading light above his bed would turn on. It was Iszabella, he realized, who was the one crying. The bedsheet had been kicked onto the floor and she was laying curled on her side, a hand pressed between her legs, into her thigh where she’d dug her nails in. Her eyes were open, but Gilbert knew she couldn’t see him from how they were unfocused and glazed with tears. 

 

What he did from there was instinct he didn’t know he had in him. Later, he’d wonder what had kicked in, because he felt like he was on autopilot when he got up and knelt down at the side of his roommate’s bed. “You’re in bed…” he started off uncertainly, but for some reason his mouth kept going, the words kept coming. “You’re in bed, in a room with your roommate, and he’s- I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to get you to calm down. There’s nurses and probably a few doctors here, and I can go get one if that’s what you need. You’re in a psychiatric ward, in a hospital. All the people here just want to help you…” he knew that was a lie. The therapist who had treated Iszabella so terribly obviously didn’t want to help her, but this wasn’t the time to bring that up.

 

The voice was initially comforting and it came to Iszabella through the blood and pain. For the first part, she thought it was Toris. It was deep and accented, but also gentle, but then she noticed it was scratchy and despite being unable to place it as her roommate, she knew it wasn’t her friend. The blood was coming back again, swirling around her and she couldn’t breathe again.

 

Iszabella curled up tighter, squeezing her legs together until they were shaking with the effort. More sobbing racked her body, whimpering in a mix of English and Polish and complete nonsense.

 

“I-I’m gonna get a nurse, okay?” Gilbert felt uneasy. He didn’t feel right about leaving Iszabella alone, but he couldn’t deal with this. In fact, he was completely terrified, having never before seen someone act this way. Sure, he’d had his own episodes (he was in the hospital for a reason, after all), but it was never like this.

 

Standing up again, he walked toward the door, tentatively opening it. For a quick moment he glanced back into the room, taking a second to let his eyes adjust back to the dim light. At least Iszabella was still curled up on the bed. He looked back out and caught the eye of one of the nurses. She saw the expression on his face and started walking faster, until she was pushing past him into the room.

 

To the nurse, this was just another Tuesday night. She knelt down next to the bed where Gilbert had been moments before, starting to speak softly. The nurses hadn’t been able to get much information about Iszabella. In fact, no one had, since other than the visible eating disorder and the indication that she had some sort of trauma she was dealing with, they hadn’t been able to get Iszabella to talk about what was going on, and Toris had refused to go into what he said was his friend’s business. 

 

“My name’s Elizavetha, and I’m a nurse. I’m here to help you, okay? You’ve just got to focus on my voice, and nothing else. I don’t care what else is going on, it’s extremely important that you listen to what I’m saying.”

 

This voice was unfamiliar, but it was definitely a woman speaking, and Iszabella suddenly didn’t feel like she was suffocating anymore. She grabbed for the words like a lifeline, forcing her attention onto them and nothing else. The blood was gone and there was a face in front of her now. She blinked a few times, breath still coming out in shaky panting. 

 

“If you want to talk about what happened, you can,” Elizavetha moved to sit on the very edge of the bed, a few inches away from where Iszabella’s head was. She was still tense, still digging her nails into her thigh. She wasn’t actually causing any harm to herself since the hospital-issued sweatpants were thick enough to cushion her skin against the force of slightly sharp nails. 

 

There was silence between them now, and Elizavetha just somehow knew she wasn’t going to get anything out of her. That was something else she was used to. 

 

“Can you tell me your name?” she asked softly, hoping the patient could at least answer basic questions.

 

“Iszabella,” the words didn’t feel trapped this time, but they came out shaky. She anticipated more questions, maybe being told that her records didn’t say that was her name, but Elizavetha just nodded.

 

“That’s a pretty name,” she murmured, and Iszabella sighed with relief. Some of the tension left her body and she suddenly felt safe. Elizavetha picked up the clipboard she’d placed on the floor next to her and flipped through the pages until she landed on the one that listed Feliks Łukasiewicz. Taking the pen out from under the metal clip, she scribbled out the name and turned back to the patient. “How do you spell it?”

 

Iszabella recited the spelling of her name in that same shaky voice, watching nervously as the nurse wrote it out beneath where the other name had been crossed out. “I know your situation isn’t the best right now, but tomorrow you can use the phones and get whatever documents you need to be transferred. Until then, I can promise you that you’re safe. Gilbert’s a good person,” she reached out and, since Iszabella didn’t flinch away, gently stroked her hair. It was dry and brittle from malnutrition, and a few strands fell out onto the pillow. Elizavetha had seen people in this kind of shape before, but it didn’t make it any less difficult to see someone literally wasting away before her. 

 

Even though everything in Iszabella screamed that she was being lied to, that she wasn’t safe, she forced herself to believe Elizavetha. She could trust the nurse, couldn’t she?

 

“I’ve got to go, I have to finish checking in on this side of the wing, but if anything else happens, Gilbert knows to come get me. You really just have to trust that you’ll be safe tonight,” Elizavetha carefully stood up from where she’d been sitting, looking down at Iszabella. The sheets were on the floor so she knelt down to pick them up, carefully setting the blanket over her in hopes it would maybe make her feel more secure.

 

It hurt to walk away, especially since she didn’t know if Iszabella would stay calm after she’d left, but she was on the clock and needed to check in on the other patients. As she went down the hall, peeking through the window and sometimes opening the door of every room she walked by, Elizavetha couldn’t help but think about Iszabella. It didn’t seem right that she was forced into the men’s ward. Even though her roommate specifically wasn’t violent (at least, not to others), there were other men on the ward who were. 

 

Almost all women seemed to at some point have been conditioned to fear that men would rape them. Elizavetha had grown up learning to never go out alone at night, to hold her keys between her fingers so she could punch them into anyone who tried to grab her, and to not get into any situations where she was alone with unfamiliar men. She doubted Iszabella had had that conditioning, though that was assuming she’d grown up identifying as male. Somehow, though, she just  _ knew _ that part of the woman’s fear came from the fact that she was terrified of having the men in the ward assault her. Elizavetha couldn’t blame her. If she’d been in her position, she’d be scared out of her mind as well.

 

Once her side of the wing was cleared and she’d reported the incident with Iszabella, Elizavetha found herself walking toward the office for the therapist assigned to her side of the wing. She assumed that Iszabella’s file would be in there. Thankfully, the office was empty so she entered and closed the door behind her, going to sit at the desk. There were two drawers on her left side, labeled with sections of the alphabet. She didn’t exactly know where Ł would be, but she pulled out the first drawer and flipped to the hanging folder labeled with an L. 

 

She went through Lawrence, Lawley, Ling, and Locke before finding Łukasiewicz. The file was thin, and she assumed that there wasn’t much more information on her than what she’d been given. The nurses were allowed to know a patient’s diagnoses, symptoms, and triggers, along with anything else beneficial that didn’t take away too much privacy from them. 

 

Elizavetha flipped open the file and started looking through the papers. The first one had a pink sticky note on it, which read ‘one-on-one assignment needed’. That made sense, there was no way Iszabella could be trusted on her own after a meal, not in her current state. She sucked in a breath, pausing momentarily before reaching out to grab a pen from the cup on the therapist’s desk. She peeled away the sticky note and crumpled it, tossing it into the trash, before going through the papers until she found the one she was looking for. Iszabella had a therapist assigned to her, but not a one-on-one or general nurse, so Elizavetha neatly wrote her name in over the space next to each of those assignments. Yes, there was the possibility that what she was doing was selfish, but there was too high of a possibility that Iszabella would be assigned a male nurse, and she didn’t want to think of how much that would scare her.

 

Elizavetha read through the file, but there wasn’t much in there that she didn’t already know. She put it away and moved everything in the room back to its original places. Unless the therapist checked the security tapes for some reason, he’d never know she’d been in his office. 

 

By the time she’d left, it was time to do another round to check on the patients. She seemed to rush through the first rooms, just glancing in and marking the occupants as accounted for on her checklist before moving on. When she reached Iszabella’s, rather than glancing in she carefully opened the door to check on her. Gilbert was sleeping, something made evident by the soft snores coming from the left side of the room. At first she thought Iszabella was also asleep, but their eyes met and she knew she wasn’t. 

 

Since the nurse had come to calm her down, Iszabella had been repeating a new mantra over and over in her head.  _ I can promise that you’re safe. Gilbert’s a good person. _ She held onto those words as her lifeline now, forcing herself to believe them. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep that night, maybe not ever, but at least the memories were gone and she had someone else’s word to prove that her roommate wouldn’t hurt her. In fact, seeing him sleeping made him infinitely less intimidating. He couldn’t do anything in sleep this deep, could he?

 

Standing in the doorway with the white of the hallway illuminating her from behind, Elizavetha made a thumbs-up gesture, in hopes she could get some sort of response indicating whether or not it was okay to leave. Thankfully, Iszabella nodded after a few moments and the nurse carefully left the room, closing the door gently behind her.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So major trigger warning for a pretty descriptive rape flashback and a small one for a somewhat descriptive scene of someone vomiting. If you'd like to skip over it, it's the last three paragraphs in the chapter, starting with the two in italics.

Light flooded through the room at exactly 6:30 am, and it was accompanied by a nurse banging on the wall twice and telling them to get up. That wasn’t a problem for Iszabella, since she’d never actually fallen asleep. Gilbert, however, groaned and turned to lay on his stomach with his face buried into the mattress. He’d never liked mornings, much less having to go by other people’s routines.

 

Eventually, though, he got up and turned to look at the bed next to him. Iszabella was sitting with her legs crossed, looking down at her lap. He couldn’t read her expression.

 

“Are you doing alright?” Gilbert asked as he stood up. He stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles with a series of sharp pops. 

 

“I guess,” 

 

Iszabella wanted to take a shower. No, she needed to. Her thighs itched and it was only a matter of time before she started feeling as though blood and semen were spilling down her. She needed to be clean.

 

“Can… is it alright…” Iszabella choked on the words and the fear that came with them. She could feel her roommate staring at her so she forced the rest of the sentence out. “Can you leave so I can take a shower?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fine with that. If you want more privacy, you can hang your sheet over the doorframe, I’ll let you use my books to hold it in place. We’re allowed to keep the door closed until breakfast, too,” Gilbert glanced over at her and he was suddenly disgusted by the therapist, even more so than he’d been the day before. He was forcing a  _ woman  _ to shower in the same room as a man, without a door or even a curtain to separate them. Yes, she was trans and yes, he was going to leave so she could have as much privacy as possible, but that didn’t make it any less terrible, at least not to him.

 

Iszabella nodded and pulled out one of the drawers beneath her bed to grab a clean t-shirt and sweatpants. They were the smallest size available, and they still felt like they were going to fall off her waist because the drawstring had been removed. The last thing she grabbed was the bedsheet, before she came to the sudden realization that she couldn’t take a shower. At least, not with that stupid cast. 

 

She looked down at her arm, at the pink plaster with a little heart drawn on the part that wrapped up around her thumb. Why had she been so stupid? She’d just thrown up and had the dumb idea of going into the basement to hide from Toris, who she knew would be mad at her. She’d been scared and already dizzy from not eating nearly enough, and she’d passed out halfway down and broken her arm during the fall.

 

That was what had brought her here, what had forced her to spend weeks being told by doctors that the combination of starving herself and using black-market hormones had made her bones weaker, what had forced her into a psychiatric ward for men, what had forced her to have an insane therapist who refused to change that.

 

Iszabella couldn’t stand up anymore. She dropped what she was holding on the bed and sat down, eyes starting to lose focus. There was blood between her legs again, and she felt dirty, tainted.

 

_ I don’t think any less of you because of this. You’re not dirty, the people who did this to you are. _

 

Her lower lip trembled as she remembered Toris’s words. Sometimes she believed that he meant what he’d said, but this wasn’t one of those times. He’d probably been lying to her, as though doing so would make her feel better, like she wasn’t tainted.

 

“Iszabella? Do I need to get someone?” the incident the night before had scared Gilbert. He’d had a roommate in the past who had nightmares, but he’d been able to pull him out of them and calm him down. Iszabella wasn’t like that, though. He couldn’t get the image of her out of his mind, of how he’d seemed to make things worse when he’d tried to talk to her. If she started slipping away again, he wasn’t going to try to deal with it.

 

At least she was coherent enough to shake her head. Eventually, she spoke again. “The nurse last night said there was like, a phone I could use. Where is it?” Iszabella glanced down at the clothes next to her, wondering if she should change. If she didn’t, she’d feel dirty, but if she did, that would mean she’d have to see her body and that would bring on entirely different feelings she didn’t want to deal with.

 

Finally, Gilbert could answer one of her questions. “I can walk you there. If you aren’t going to take a shower, you should at least change, your clothes are dirty. I don’t like dirty.”

 

Iszabella’s breath hitched at his words. It reminded her of how she felt, making it even worse. “Y-yeah, I’m gonna change,” she got up and picked up the clothes, walking into the bathroom. The tile was cold against her feet, the lights blindingly bright. Everything was white, and she hated it. The only color was her green eyes staring back at her from the mirror, something not-quite-right in them.

 

She peeked out again, just to be sure Gilbert wasn’t going to come in and look at her. He was turned away from her, running a comb through his hair. 

 

First her sweatshirt came off, then the white shirt they’d given her to wear. She hadn’t been allowed to wear a bra, and though she didn’t exactly need one, it made her uncomfortable to know that her chest was bare beneath her clothing. It was another way for the hospital to tell her that they didn’t see her as a woman.

 

Iszabella hesitated before taking her sweatpants off. She hadn’t been allowed a mirror in her hospital room, but now she could get a good look at herself. Before going to the hospital, she’d constantly fixated on how she looked, on how her body compared to the magazine models she wanted to be like. Now, it felt familiar, even comforting to trace a finger over the gentle curve of one of her breasts, staring back at it in the mirror. She’d been on hormones for nearly five years now, but hadn’t had much growth. Her eating disorder was partly responsible for that. 

 

When she looked in the mirror, what she didn’t see was her skin stretched tight over her ribs, or the way her collarbones jutted out. She didn’t even see someone who she thought was pretty. Girls in People and Vogue who’d had plastic surgery and lipo were pretty. Iszabella wasn’t.

 

She didn’t want to look at herself anymore so she forced off her pants, but not her underwear. There was no way she would take off those underwear until she got something to tuck with. It wasn’t like the doctors would allow her to have duct tape, since there was probably some way she could use it to kill herself, so she’d have to get creative. Maybe later, when she was alone, she’d stack a few pairs of underwear and try to use that. For the time being, she put on the clean sweatpants and shirt as fast as possible, turned around so she didn’t have to look in the mirror.

 

The nurse who had checked her in had given her a package of toiletries, so she returned to her bed and rummaged through it, finding a comb, but not a hairbrush. It would have to do. 

 

When Iszabella was young, she’d sit on the floor of her parents’ bedroom, watching her mother brush her hair. She’d always had beautiful, long hair, the same shade of blonde as Iszabella’s. And she’d always said her mother taught her to brush her hair with 100 strokes each night before bed so it wouldn’t get tangled. If her mother saw her now, she’d probably be ashamed. Iszabella didn’t even know if her mother was still alive. She was fairly young, but when they’d reunited, Toris told her she’d been diagnosed with cancer. That still wasn’t enough to get her to reconnect with her family. After what she’d done and been through, they wouldn’t want her.

 

Iszabella finished combing through her hair and cleaned everything up, remembering what her roommate had said about not liking dirty. If he knew what she’d done, that probably meant he wouldn’t like her. Then again, she assumed that he already didn’t like her much. That was alright, the feeling was mutual.

 

“Are you ready?” Iszabella turned around to see Gilbert looking at her. He was wearing the exact same grey t-shirt and sweatpants as she was, as probably everyone else in the hospital was. That just served to make her more uncomfortable. She’d have no choice but to look like a man.

 

Rather than respond verbally, Iszabella nodded. Much like she had the night before, she followed a few paces behind her roommate as he led her through the halls. A few other people were walking around, but most remained in their rooms, catching a few more minutes of sleep or getting ready. 

 

The phones weren’t far away, and were in the same hallway as Iszabella’s therapist’s office. There were three of them, old princess-style phones hanging on the wall. “There’s a half hour or so until the cafeteria opens. I’ll wait in the room for you and walk you there, just come back when you’ve finished your call,” Gilbert tried to give Iszabella a reassuring smile before he left, but he doubted she cared. He’d noticed her acting weird around him, giving him a wide berth and flinching back anytime he got too close. He pitied her, something awful had obviously happened to make her act that way.

 

As soon as Gilbert left, Iszabella grabbed the phone and dialed the number she knew by heart, fingers shaking with how much she needed Toris to pick up. There were two rings, before she heard a familiar voice on the other side.

 

“Hello, who is this?”

 

“To Iszabella, nie wiem co robić i potrzebuję moich dokumentów, ponieważ lekarz mówi, że wciąż jestem mężczyzną i nie pozwala mi-”

 

Click.

 

The line went dead and Iszabella choked on her words.

 

“I didn’t say you had permission to talk on the phone. You disobeyed me, you skipped dinner last night, and a nurse had to respond to an incident involving you last night. You’re on thin ice, Feliks. If you don’t watch it, we’ll have to send you to a more intensive unit where you don’t get the kinds of privileges you have now,” it was the therapist speaking, his hand pressed against the phone’s cradle so Iszabella couldn’t try the call again. He grabbed the phone from her hand, slamming it against the cradle. “Go back to your room. And I had better see your face at breakfast,”

 

Iszabella knew better than to get angry or argue. She just turned around, taking a right down the hall and glancing into each room until she saw Gilbert.

 

“That was fast,”

 

“He wouldn’t let me call,” Iszabella’s voice was strained from her choking back tears. She’d taken Toris for granted during the past year, and now when she needed him most, all forms of contact were cut off.

 

“Who wouldn’t let you call?” Gilbert knew this question was useless, since he already had a pretty good idea of who it was.

 

“The therapist. The one that put me here,” she whimpered and tears started dripping down her cheeks. “And he told me I’m like, in trouble for what happened last night when the nurse had to come in and for not eating dinner and because I tried to talk on the phone,” she walked back to the bed and sat down on the bare mattress. Gilbert wondered if he should come any closer and try to comfort her, but the image of her the previous night came to his mind and he stayed where he was.

 

“He’s a fucking bastard,” he turned to face Iszabella, watching her curl her legs to her chest. 

 

She nodded, wiping a thumb under her eye to push away the tears that were falling. Her shoulders were shaking and thoughts racing through her mind. She needed Toris.

 

“Hey, later we can go to one of the other therapists and try to talk to them. The one I have is more reasonable, maybe he’ll be able to do something or at least let you use the phone,” Gilbert was appalled at the way Iszabella was being treated. He’d heard of plenty bad experiences with the therapist she had. He had a bitter personality and was easily annoyed, and could be quite stubborn. This was different than just clashing personalities, though. He had no idea who she needed to call so much, but he could tell it was important, and you didn’t need to be a genius to see that the therapist enjoyed insulting her and making her feel uncomfortable.

 

“You’d do that?” Iszabella asked, voice still shaking a little. She wanted so badly to trust Gilbert, but she knew from experience that when someone did something nice for her, they’d want something in return. She contemplated turning down his offer, but the bruises on her arm throbbed and she felt those angry green eyes burn her skin, and she couldn’t stop from accepting.

 

“Yeah. We’ll go after breakfast, there’s a period where people can go to group therapy, and someone should be free then,” he offered Iszabella a smile and though she didn’t return it, he noticed that she’d stopped crying. That was at least progress.

 

They sat in silence, Gilbert occasionally glancing over at Iszabella just to check on her. He didn’t exactly like her or consider her a friend, partially because of how much she pushed him away, but he felt like he had to help her, seeing as she was so powerless on her own. It wasn’t his business, just like most of the patients’ issues, but he wanted to know what had happened to her. He recognized anorexia just from how she looked, but he knew from her outburst and odd reactions to simple things that she’d been through something traumatic. It wasn’t like he could just ask her, though. She didn’t look like the type to open like a book.

 

Gilbert could hear doors opening and people leaving their rooms, walking through the halls. The cafeteria was probably open. “Come on, I’ll walk you to breakfast,” he stood up again and watched Iszabella slowly get up. Her hands were shaking.

 

For a moment, Gilbert wondered if he should tell her that she would probably be put on one-on-one after the meal. He decided against it, realizing there was a high possibility she was in the denial phase of her eating disorder. As far as he knew, she’d just been admitted the day before, probably after her arm was dealt with. That was another thing he wanted to ask about; he wanted to know how she’d broken her arm, but decided against it. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable with intrusive questions.

 

He tried to get her to walk next to him, rather than behind him, but she kept trailing a few feet away. The cafeteria was a little farther away, and he realized she looked tired just from the short walk.

 

Iszabella was looking nervously around the room. She’d seen movies like High School Musical, and this was like a warped version of the cafeteria in it. The tables, the chairs, the floors and walls were all white. If she saw any more white, she’d probably be sick. There was the low hum of conversation, but there were also people sitting completely isolated and entire groups that just weren’t talking. She started to get nervous, because there were so many men around her, and most of them looked like they could easily beat her to a pulp. 

 

“You can eat with me if you want,” Gilbert glanced down at Iszabella, wondering what was going on in her mind. She was shaking like a leaf, and her eyes were glassy with fear. “Come on, let’s get in line,” he gestured for her to follow, knowing it wasn’t a good idea to nudge her or even get too close. At least she followed that direction, sticking closer to him than she had before.

 

“Hey, Francey Pants, come here,” Gilbert’s eyes landed on a man about his age but a little shorter in stature. He looked unkempt, with blonde hair falling in messy curls over his shoulders and a thick layer of stubble covering his chin. When he heard that he was being called over, he looked up from his cup of coffee and walked towards them, glancing over towards Iszabella and raising an eyebrow.

 

Gilbert stepped out of the line, leaving a gap. Iszabella didn’t step forward, recognizing the unspoken rule that his place was still saved. He walked over to meet the man, not wanting him to come over and startle his roommate. “You’re better at this stuff than I am, I need your advice,” he kept his voice low, not wanting them to be overheard. “That’s my new roommate, her name’s Iszabella and that dick of a therapist won’t move her to the women’s wing because she’s trans. He’s done other stuff too, he keeps calling her by the wrong name and he wouldn’t let her use the phone,”

 

“By dick of a therapist do you mean Kirkland?”

 

“Yeah. Anyway, last night I don’t know what happened but she had some kind of breakdown. I had to get one of the nurses because it got worse when I tried to talk to her, and now Kirkland’s telling her she’s in trouble for that too. I told her after breakfast I’ll take her to my therapist to see if she can use the phone, but I’ve also got a feeling she’ll be on one-on-one for at least an hour. I don’t know what I really want you to do, but maybe you can talk to her or something,” he was mostly holding onto the fact that Francis was gay and had a lot of friends who were queer, and that maybe somehow he could get through to Iszabella that way- though that part of his plan did happen to have a lot of holes.

 

“I’ll see what I can do. I’m sitting over there,” he pointed at a table near the far side of the room, which was empty except for a tray of food that likely belonged to him. “Come meet me when you’ve got food,” he waited until Gilbert nodded in confirmation before starting to walk back to the table with his cup of coffee.

 

Gilbert returned to the line, looking back at Iszabella. Again, he was checking in just to make sure she was okay.

 

Iszabella was nervous, but she forced herself to focus on the food. There wasn’t much that looked low-calorie, so she’d have to be picky. At least she could clearly see a stack of jell-o cups. She could eat those. 

 

They were given plastic trays as they neared the tables laden with food. Iszabella balanced hers awkwardly on top of her cast and against her stomach, but realized that made it hard to accept the scoop of scrambled eggs she was being offered by an overly persistent member of the kitchen staff.

 

“Do you want me to hold that for you?” Gilbert asked, pointing at Iszabella’s tray. She nodded and set it down, so he could take it without them touching. By the time they’d gotten through the line, she had the scoop of eggs she’d been unable to refuse, two cups of jell-o, and a cup of water. Oblivious to the fact that a nurse would be watching her for an hour after the meal, she held on to the fact that there was a toilet in her room and it wouldn’t be hard to force herself to vomit. She had practice.

 

Gilbert carried both trays to the table where Francis was. He set down Iszabella’s tray across from Francis and set himself somewhere halfway between them both, so he wasn’t so close to his roommate that she was uncomfortable but was still close enough that she didn’t feel stuck with someone completely unfamiliar. 

 

Iszabella sat down nervously, staring at the tray in front of her like it was a bomb close to going off. Just the smell made her feel like throwing up. The jell-o was okay to eat, and she reminded herself of that. It was basically just water, and the two she’d picked were sugar free.

 

She forced herself to pick one up, examining the label. There were ten calories, so both would amount to twenty calories. She didn’t know how much was in the eggs, but she assumed somewhere around a hundred. Maybe if she drowned them in enough condiments, they’d be appealing.

 

“This is my friend Francis. He might understand your situation better than I do, and he’s completely safe. If you don’t want to talk to him, just say the word and I’ll ask him to leave,” 

 

“What do you mean by  _ my situation _ ?” Iszabella asked. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be without most of the use of her left hand to peel the top off her jell-o, and was currently struggling with that. 

 

“I mean, the fact that you’re a transsexual,”

 

“He means transgender,” Francis spoke up, and Iszabella didn’t know why, but something about his voice made the feeling that she needed to throw up even worse.

 

“Yes, that,” Gilbert’s voice was muffled, he was talking with his mouth full.

 

The woman made no move to respond, instead continuing her attempts to get the top off the jell-o. Gilbert realized she was struggling, and instinctively leaned over to help her. He realized he’d made a mistake when she flinched away and forcefully shoved the plastic cup towards him. She was trembling again, and when the opened jell-o was placed back on her tray, she could barely manage to hold her spoon to eat it.

 

“Can you tell me what’s going on, sweetheart?” Francis’s words hit Iszabella’s ears and all she could pick out was the last one and she was suddenly imagining that it was gruff and breathy and much closer to her than it really was.

 

_ “Come on sweetheart, show me what you can do. Show me how much you like being on your knees,” the voice came with hot breath on the shell of her ear, and she had to hold in a whimper when it was gone and there were hands on her back, pushing her down so her chest met the bed and her face was pressed into the dirty sheets. Those same hands left and each one came around a thigh and cupped it, pulling her legs farther apart. “I’ve always loved trannies, fucking them is like opening a present. There’s pretty wrapping and you’ve got a surprise when you take it off,” Iszabella bit down hard on her lip when she felt a hand curl around to her front, resting a moment below her belly button before trailing down to her crotch. Just as he grabbed her, her teeth split open her lip and blood filled her mouth.  _

 

_ She sobbed when he entered her, when she felt the pain of tearing and the heat of blood. It dripped down to her legs every time he pulled back before a thrust. “You like that, huh sweetheart?” tears and snot dripped into her mouth and onto the blankets her face was buried in. She felt a strong body curl over hers, hands grabbing at her until they found her breasts and squeezed them. It hurt, especially with how small she was. He pressed a hand against her chest and forced her up, changing the angle he was thrusting into her. Iszabella sobbed harder every time she was forced into, the sobs eventually turning to screams when the man released into her. He didn’t care, not even when she fell back onto the bed afterwards and he could see her face, wet with tears and blood dripping from her mouth. Not even when she turned to her side and curled her legs up to try to ease the discomfort, and her backside was streaked with a mix of blood and seemen, more of which coated the bed beneath her. He just muttered, “disgusting whore,” and walked away, leaving her alone in the room. _

 

Iszabella stood up and ran. She didn’t know where she was going, but her throat burned and she knew she was going to throw up. Tears blinded her and she had no idea where her room was, so she ran into something she assumed was a bathroom. There were no toilets, just soft carpeting and chairs in front of a desk, but she made out the outline of a trash can and knelt down before it. There wasn't much in her stomach to throw up, so after a few seconds she was left just crying and coughing stomach acid into the bucket. Then, when she felt like there was nothing left, she fell back onto the floor. The last thing she remembered feeling was arms wrapping around her and propping her up, and a bare hand wiping something away from her chin.


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to put in a few lighter chapters so I can start to establish Iszabella and Gilbert's relationship. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading!

 

The doctors decided the best thing to do was let Iszabella sleep. They gave her some pills and she was off into a dreamless slumber. When they wore off, Elizavetha came in and got her to eat, and she was given more pills so she went back to sleep.

 

Gilbert should have been happy. It was almost like having the room to himself again. It didn’t feel right, though, for his roommate to be comatose at almost all times. 

 

After three days, the doctors decided she was no longer a danger to herself. They took her off the pills during the day, and added them to the experimental cocktail of drugs she was given each night.

 

She ignored Gilbert and his attempts to apologize. He understood why, it made perfect sense that she wouldn’t want to talk to him after he’d scared her away that day in the cafeteria. Iszabella mostly stayed in bed, and Elizavetha let her have a stack of tabloid magazines to read. The only time she left was for meals and therapy, and she’d made no progress whatsoever on the latter. 

 

Every time she sat in that wooden chair and was stared down by a therapist whose eyebrows probably needed to be groomed with a weed whacker, it was as though her tongue had been cut out. He asked if she knew why she was there and she shook her head. He asked how she’d broken her arm and she just blinked. He asked why she hadn’t tried to go to a gender therapist to get an actual prescriptions for hormones and she got up and left.

 

Toris made call after call to the number the hospital had given him. Every time, he was either told by a man who claimed to be Iszabella’s therapist that he would be interrupting her treatment if he tried contacting her (though he used the wrong name and pronouns, which was what led him to believe something was up), or put on hold for literal hours by that same man. He was sick of going nowhere and getting no information, and starting to get worried. He’d known Iszabella since they were children, and she wouldn’t go this long without trying to get in touch with him. Something had to be going on, and he was especially suspicious after her call to him nearly a week before had been cut off.

 

After another failed attempt at contacting the hospital, Toris went to the website and found out when visitors were allowed, and decided he’d just go there. If there was an issue with that for any reason, they’d have him to answer to. The website also said that visitors were allowed to bring patients some things from home such as clothing and books, so he went around the house and found some of Iszabella’s belongings, putting them in a bag for her to have.

 

At exactly six o’ clock, Toris was in the common room of the women’s ward, talking to a very confused nurse.

 

“I know every patient here. We don’t have an Iszabella Łukasiewicz and we never have. Are you sure you’re at the right hospital?”

 

For what seemed like the billionth time, Toris nodded. He was honestly getting quite annoyed with this woman. “Yes, I am. Maybe she was checked in under the wrong name? It’s very hard to not notice her, she’s a little shorter than me, short blonde hair, talks with an accent,” he paused for a moment, before adding something he hadn’t mentioned yet. “And she’s transgender,”

 

The nurse nodded. “Then you should probably check the men’s ward. We place patients with the sex marked on their identifying documents,”

 

Toris sighed and thanked her for her help. No, it wasn’t exactly help, because this now made things a million times worse. He could just imagine that his friend was absolutely terrified, not to mention horribly dysphoric. 

 

The men’s ward was on the opposite side of the building, and he found that his nervousness worsened with every step he took towards it.

 

_ Toris hadn’t seen Iszabella in four years. He didn’t know what to expect, but the mental image he had was of her on her sixteenth birthday, standing in front of the horse she’d gotten as a present with her hands over her mouth and her green eyes bright. He remembered well how she’d been wearing the pink sweatshirt he’d bought her, which was the sort of thing that wasn’t too feminine to be worn in front of her parents, and how she’d had on the skinny jeans Toris told her made her figure look more like that of a girl. He knew she couldn’t stay sixteen forever, but he hadn’t expected her to look much older than twenty. _

 

_ She’d had the same blonde hair and short stature and small figure, and she wore the sort of clothes Toris knew she liked. It was her mannerisms that had changed and made her look much older and more worn out than she should be. When he’d tried to hug her, she’d flinched away, and he noticed bruises on her wrists and upper arms, like she’d been held down. The police had briefed him on what happened, and he’d watched the news enough to know what her and those other women had been through, but it didn’t prepare him for how much it had changed her. _

 

_ The Iszabella he’d known was sassy and a little selfish and always smiling for some reason. She’d been talkative, too, sometimes enough that he barely got a word in edgewise. Now she seemed to have a permanent expression of fear printed on her face and she only spoke when he asked her a direct question. He could tell she was lying, too, when she tried to reassure him that she was fine. _

 

Toris opened the door to a common room much like the one in the women’s ward. There were a few people in there with visitors, but it seemed much sparser. There wasn’t a doctor in sight, so he stood awkwardly, not knowing if he should go look for one.

 

“You lookin’ for something?”

 

He heard a rough voice from somewhere to his left and looked up to see an albino guy standing a few feet away. He looked like a patient, but Toris decided asking him was his best bet.

 

“Yes, actually. I’m looking for Iszabella Łukasiewicz. The nurse in the women’s ward told me to look here,”

 

“Holy shit, Iszabella has a visitor? If there’s anyone who needs one it’s her, she hates everyone here,” he laughed, but Toris didn’t find it all that funny. His grip tightened on the handles of the cloth grocery back he was holding.

 

“Where can I find her?” Toris couldn’t help feeling a little frantic. He had no idea what state she was in. For all he knew, she could be having a breakdown right then and there. What if she hadn’t called because they’d drugged her up until she couldn’t talk? His stomach twisted with all the dismal possibilities. 

 

“Come on, she’s my roommate, I’ll take you to her,” Gilbert started walking and Toris followed, down a long corridor until they reached one of the rooms. He was surprised that anyone could pick out which room was theirs, since from the outside they all seemed identical, save for a metal plate next to the doorframe with a number on it.

 

Toris walked into the room and his eyes immediately landed on the bed on the left. Iszabella was on it, laying on her stomach and reading a magazine. She looked up at him and her eyes held the same sort of pain they had when he’d picked her up from the police station three years ago.

 

“Gόwno, Izsabella, Bardzo mi przykro, że nie odwiedziłem go wcześniej,” he walked over to her and set down the grocery bag, sitting down on the edge of her bed. She flinched back a little and it made his stomach twist even more. It had been nearly two years since she’d stopped instinctively flinching away from him, and now she was doing it again.

 

“I missed you,” she murmured, sitting up so they could have a proper conversation. 

 

“I missed you too. I called over and over again, and the doctor never answered any of my questions. He never hung up on me, but he’d put me on hold for so long that I had no choice to hang up,” 

 

Iszabella hesitated before moving closer to Toris, laying her legs over his lap and leaning into his chest. She knew that no matter what, she was able to trust him, even if her mind tried to convince her otherwise. They’d known each other for nineteen years, and he’d never tried to hurt her or thought she was broken or disgusting.

 

“My therapist’s an asshole. He keeps using the wrong name and stuff and he wouldn’t let me use the phone. I tried to ask him about changing wards but he said there’s no proof I’m a girl. I’m trapped,” she sniffled and Toris could feel tears coming on. He’d read a lot about psychiatric wards, hoping knowledge would put his mind at ease, and most of the articles had mentioned that patients cried a lot during their time there. This was to be expected.

 

He wrapped an arm around her and stroked her side with a thumb. She didn’t seem like herself again, it was like they were back to square one.

 

“I’ll talk to him on my way out. I’m going to get things figured out for you, okay?”

 

She nodded, and he started to wonder if the hospital was helping at all. Before this, he’d gotten her to give him verbal answers to yes or no questions, and she’d had no problem talking to him. Now, he could feel that she was withdrawn again.

 

“I brought you some stuff from home,” he decided the best route to go on was to cheer her up. Toris leaned over a little and grabbed a large horse stuffed animal from the top of the bag. It was the kind that they had at carnivals for people to win. She’d gotten it a few months ago in a ring toss game she’d been surprisingly good at, and had kept it in her bed like a pillow since.

 

“Aww, thank you,” she grabbed the horse and hugged it, burying her face in the soft fabric. It smelled like freshly mowed grass and floral fabric softener and home. She missed home, she missed the cozy couch in front of the TV and the sound of Toris flipping the pages of a book and the gentle creaking of the hardwood floors. 

 

As soon as Iszabella had grabbed the horse, Toris noticed a happy spark in her eyes, which made the twisting in his stomach leave slightly. He’d been scared that he’d lost her in this place.

 

“So, what have you been up to? I see you’ve been reading,” he glanced at the stack of magazines on the floor by her bed. It wasn’t the best idea to give them to her, because among reading articles about movie stars and singers, she’d fixate on the women’s bodies, comparing herself to them and finding more flaws. Plus, he thought tabloids were absolute garbage and not intellectually stimulating whatsoever. Toris would let it slide, though, if reading this stuff made her happy.

 

“Sleeping, mostly. They gave me pills and now the nightmares are totally gone… and the dreams, but I didn’t have many of those in the first place,” 

 

“And is that a good thing?”

 

“I guess,”

 

Toris got her to talk to him some more, but she fell silent when he tried asking if she was eating. That was one of those things he couldn’t get through to her about. When he’d first found out she was skipping meals when he was gone and throwing up after eating, he’d gotten mad at her, and she hadn’t forgiven him for how he acted.

 

After that, she pulled away from him and refused to say anything else, and he knew it was probably a good idea to leave. He still had to talk to her doctor, and he wanted to speak with her roommate as well, partly to find out about the things she’d refused to talk about. She didn’t seem well-adjusted and he wondered if it was a good idea to find a different hospital for her to go to. Yes, it would probably cost more and she’d be unhappy, but she needed help. He was terrified that Iszabella was just going to get worse and eventually starve to death.

 

“I’m gonna go talk to your therapist. Try and get better for me, okay? I miss you a lot at home,” he leaned in and kissed her forehead, which Iszabella didn’t react to at all. He felt bad for upsetting her. 

 

As Toris left the room, he glanced back at his friend just to make sure she was alright. She was back to reading the magazine, and he was glad to know that she was at least okay enough to do that.

 

“You’re her roommate, right?” Toris sat down on one of the couches in the common area, across from the guy who had led him to the room. He stood out, mostly because he was albino, but also because he was quite tall.

 

“Yeah. Are you her boyfriend?”

 

Toris blushed a little and shook his head. “No, no, we’re just friends,” he’d always disliked the idea of being attracted to her. They’d known each other so long, she was like his sister. He was used to people asking if they were together, but that didn’t make him any less uncomfortable about the topic.

 

“Well then, what are you here to tell me? Don’t murder her? Don’t have a psychotic episode in front of her and freak her out? Don’t get convinced she’s the reincarnation of my dead granny? I’ll tell you right now that I’m not some violent raving lunatic,” he crossed his arms over his chest, carefully watching Toris’s face.

 

“I-I didn’t think you were! I just wanted to ask if she’s been eating, she wouldn’t tell me,”

 

“Oh.” Gilbert uncrossed his arms and Toris couldn’t help but notice neat lines of scars going from his elbow to his wrist. “Yeah, they make her eat, and she’s got a nurse to stay with her after so she doesn’t throw up or anything,”

 

Toris sighed with relief. Maybe this place was helping somewhat. “That’s good. Just… just do me a favor and make sure she’s eating, and she’s not too unhappy, and she takes care of herself,” 

 

“I’ll try. She doesn’t like me much, though,”

 

“I assumed as much,”

 

An uncomfortable silence lapsed between them and Toris found himself acutely aware of a patient across the room from them talking to himself.

 

“Can you show me to her therapist’s office? I need to talk to him,”

 

Gilbert stood up and Toris followed him down the hall. He pointed him to an office right across from three phones bolted to the wall, before walking away and leaving him alone to deal with the therapist.

 

The door was closed, so he knocked, and heard a familiar voice from inside tell him to enter. He opened the door and walked in, standing in front of the desk. 

 

“I’ve been calling you for days now, I’d like an explanation as to why you never told me Iszabella was put in the men’s ward and told she can’t change to the women’s ward until she goes to a gender therapist and has her gender listed on her documents as female,”

 

The therapist set down his pen and looked over at Toris for a few seconds, before turning to open a planner and spend an agonizingly long time reading over his schedule for the day. “I’m sorry, I don’t think you’re listed for an appointment today. You’ll have to leave, I’m about to have a patient come in,”

 

“This is important. My friend is being mistreated,”

 

“If it’s important, you can make an appointment over the phone. I can assure you that Feliks is fine,”

 

Toris’s stomach twisted again and the expression on his face changed. “What did you just call her?” he raised his voice, glaring down at the therapist. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the outburst.

 

“I am simply calling him by his legal name,”

 

“She’s had it changed, we went back to Poland to have the courts there do it,”

 

“Do you have proof?”

 

“Not with me, no, but I can bring her papers,”

 

“You can bring them once you’ve made an appointment to meet with me. Now, I have a patient coming in soon, so you need to leave,”

 

Toris kept glaring, and he wondered if he should maybe say something mean or threatening to that man, but he looked like the type that was hard to get to, and he didn’t want to make the therapist hate him even more. He just turned around and walked out, deciding he’d call to make an appointment as soon as he got home.


	5. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to update! I've been extremely busy! Thank you all for the kudos and comments, seeing them makes me so happy!
> 
> So this is a much heavier chapter than I intended. It talks a lot about rape and goes pretty far into Iszabella's backstory. I'm sorry if I don't have everything accurate, I've tried to make things pretty consistent, but I read through my last chapters and found a few inconsistencies and I'm kind of unhappy about how I started this, but I also tend to be extremely overly critical of myself, so I hope you guys think this is good, because I sure don't. Also, please leave kudos and comments if you enjoy my writing, I absolutely love reading what you guys have to say!

_ Iszabella blinked a few times. She felt as though she was in a pool of honey; her limbs were heavy and everything looked warm and yellow. She didn’t know where she was and it took a few seconds to realize she was in something that was moving. Whatever she was laying on stuck to her body and she realized she was naked except for her underwear. When she tried to move, she realized she couldn’t. _

 

_ Everything came into focus after she blinked a few more times. She looked down and her body was tied into a log. Her feet were bound together with thick rope that stung when she tried to shift her legs. Her thighs were bound together as well, and her arms were tied behind her back and to her body. She wiggled her entire body like an earthworm that had been dug up from the ground, but all it did was make the rope pull at her and rub painfully over her skin. She tried to scream, but something was in her mouth and duct tape held her lips closed. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes and she wondered if this was how she was going to die. _

 

Iszabella’s eyes shot open and she struggled more. Something was wrapped around her body, holding her down. Things slowly came into focus, illuminated by the light from the hallway. She was in bed, trapped in a cocoon of sheets. If only she could dismiss everything as ‘just a dream’. It hadn’t been a dream, it has been a memory, one of the worst ones because it represented the realization that she had really fucked up. 

 

The horse stuffed animal was on the floor, so she unwrapped the sheets from her body and leaned over to grab it. If Toris had been there, he would have woken up with her and pet her hair and told her she was safe with him. He would have listened to her tell him everything she’d remembered, and he would have told her something about how it was all in the past and those people would never hurt her again. But Toris wasn’t there and she would have to be the one to tell herself those things. When it was her saying that she was safe, it felt like she was being lied to.

 

There was nothing to do but cry, so Iszabella let out the tears she’d been holding back and sobbed into the stuffed animal she was holding.

 

“Iszabella?”

 

Of course, she’d woken Gilbert up again. He always seemed to wake up when she just wanted to be alone. She didn’t reply to him, something he’d gotten used to. He still tried again, because it seemed rude to just blow her off. He could tell she was crying and he wished he knew what to say to stop it. Gilbert had never liked seeing people cry.

 

“What’s going on?”

 

She turned over in the bed so she was facing away from him. Obviously Gilbert didn’t understand body language or just didn’t care because he kept talking.

 

“Did you have a nightmare?”

 

Iszabella hated his voice. It had the kind of roughness that came with smoking cigarettes for years and cheering too loudly at concerts. And she hated that she couldn't get rid of it. It would always come from her right side, until she answered one of his questions. 

 

“No,” she lied and immediately was angry at herself for it. Just one word, and she knew he could see right through her. God, she was pathetic. 

 

Gilbert could hear his roommate’s soft sobs coming from across the room after she’d spoken. He wondered if she was trying to seem tough by lying. It made some sense, but he had no idea if that was what was truly going on. Iszabella was so closed off around him that he didn’t think he ever would. “You’re okay now,” he tried to reassure her.

 

“I want to go home,” she sniffled and tried to breathe in the scent of home that still clung to her stuffed animal. All of her clothes and bedding always smelled like fresh linens detergent, and everything that touched her house came back smelling like old books and the spices Toris cooked with. 

 

“I know,” Gilbert replied. Even though she’d never said anything about homesickness before, he knew that nearly all the patients there missed their families and homes. “I want to go home too,” he glanced over to her side and wondered if she cared, or if she was even listening. “I miss my bird, and my friends. I’ve got a little brother and he visits a lot, but I can’t leave to watch his football games and he can’t stay over at my apartment on the weekends. I know how you feel, but we’re here to get better, and when we do we can go home and be better people.”

 

Iszabella wiped at her tears with the sheets. They were rough, but she didn’t care. It wasn't like skincare was anywhere near her top priorities right then. Gilbert was right, as much as she hated to admit it. They were there to get better; she was there to get better. “Does it get easier?” she didn’t turn over to face Gilbert, but she was making conversation, and that was enough. 

 

“Not really. I think we just get busy, and then we spend less time thinking about home and more time thinking about ourselves. I still think about everyone on the outside a lot,”

 

Iszabella nodded and Gilbert could tell from the sound the pillowcase made when it shifted. “And if you make friends, the time goes by faster. You should make some friends, stop being so closed off. I’d be your friend if you want.”

 

“I don’t want you to be my friend,” Iszabella replied, close to snapping at him. She wasn’t going to let someone get close to her, not when he’d probably want something in return for it and she was completely defenseless against him. She’d learned not to trust men like him because they were dishonest. Now she felt stupid for even getting into a conversation with Gilbert.

 

“You don’t have to be so rude about it,” he sighed and turned over so he faced away from her. 

 

Gilbert just wanted to make this time a little less shitty for Iszabella. She was in the worst possible situation, stuck in the men’s ward with a therapist who was hurting far more than he was helping, and he’d thought maybe having a friend would help. Yes, she had Elizavetha, but he doubted she understood what it was like to be a patient. They could relate on that level, if Iszabella wasn’t so damn stubborn about keeping as far away from him as possible. 

 

“What the hell is wrong with you? I try to be nice and you just get mad at me. Do you think I’m some insane nut? Do you think the minute you become my friend I’ll turn into a murderer and rip your skin off? Do you think I’m a fucking serial killer and that’s why I’m here? Do you think I’m gonna rape you-”

 

“Shut up!” Iszabella shoved the sheets off and stood up. Her legs were shaking, her heart pounding in her chest. Everything was hazy, but at the same time painfully real. 

 

_ “Iszabella, please look at me. I just need a statement saying you didn’t consent to anything that happened in the past four years. Can you please give me that statement?” the detective was leaning forward in her seat, trying to get the woman in front of her to talk to her. She’d barely gotten a sentence out of her in the hour she’d tried to interview her. _

 

_ This was a case they’d spent months working on, and even after arrests had been made and witnesses found, things didn’t get any easier. Most of the victims were uncooperative, many absolutely terrified. The police department was trying to work with them, but it was proving to be very difficult. _

 

_ “I got hormones for doing this, so it wasn’t rape,” Iszabella mumbled. She was staring at the floor, at her lap, at her hands, but not at the detective. She’d been told she would be killed if she ever told anyone she’d never consented to what she’d been through, and she still believed it. _

 

_ “Just because you got something in return doesn’t mean you gave your consent. If you tell us the truth, you can help put these men in prison. They can’t hurt anyone else if they’re in prison. I just need to have a recorded statement of you saying that you never gave your consent,” the detective stood up and walked to get something, and Iszabella saw her shiny black shoes and the dark blue legs of her pants, but she refused to look up at her face. _

 

_ Something was placed in front of her, and she cautiously peeked up at it. It was one of those miniature plastic water bottles the size of a fist, and she could tell from the condensation on the outside that it was fresh out of the fridge. She shoved it away and stared back down at the ground, clenching her mouth shut. _

 

_ “Okay, Iszabella, can you at least answer some yes or no questions?” _

 

_ She nodded. _

 

_ “I need you to speak up,” _

 

_ “Yes,” Iszabella felt like a child again, her father forcing her to stop hiding behind his legs and talk to some friend of his she’d never met. She’d always been shy around new people, but now that shyness had turned into terrible anxiety that made her hands shake and her heart pound. _

 

_ “Did you consent to be taken from Poland to The United States?” _

 

_ Iszabella paused and bit her lip. What if this woman was lying to her, trying to test her loyalty? What if she told the truth and someone found out and followed through on the promise to kill her? She was practically writing her own death sentence. _

 

_ The detective tried the question again because she wasn’t getting an answer. “Did you consent to be taken fr-” _

 

_ “No.” Iszabella shook her head and she felt ashamed. She gave in far too easily.  _

 

_ “See, that wasn’t so hard,” the detective smiled at her, even though she knew she wouldn’t see it. That was a lie, she could tell it had been difficult for Iszabella to just manage a one word answer. _

 

_ “Did you consent to sex with Ivan Braginsky?” _

 

_ “No.” Iszabella felt disgusting all of a sudden. This woman was a complete stranger, and she knew all the things she’d done, all the people who had used her body as they pleased. She had been stripped of all her privacy. _

 

_ “Did you consent to working as a prostitute?” _

 

_ A sob escaped Iszabella’s lips. She couldn't even remember faces or names or anything, just that there were men out there, men all around the city and the state and the country and maybe the world who’d had sex with her. She was a slut, like the kids in high school called her behind her back, like Ivan had called her when he’d been choking her with a strong hand around her neck like a vice, like countless men had called her when they’d had sex with her. This woman, this stranger, knew she was a slut. Everyone probably did. _

 

_ A box of tissues was pushed towards her, but they sat abandoned next to the water bottle. She didn’t want sympathy or pity or whatever the detective was trying to offer her. She wanted privacy, she wanted her virginity back, she wanted to go into the past and tell herself to not be so stupid or trusting. _

 

_ “No. No no no,” she shook her head almost violently, tears accompanying her words. “I didn't consent, they just did it, and now I don’t have a choice and I’m gonna have to do it forever because no one else will want me.” _

 

“Shit, Iszabella, I didn’t mean to piss you off,” Gilbert sat up and kicked off his sheets. Why did he have to have such a big mouth? He always said the stupidest things at the worst times, and now he was paying the price. 

 

She shook her head like she had in front of the detective. Those terrible feelings were coming back, she felt like a dirty paper towel that could only ever end up in the landfill because it was used up and people thought it was disgusting. She shouldn't have said anything, because now Gilbert probably knew she’d been raped. Now he probably saw how dirty she was. 

 

“Just shut up!” she tried yelling at him, but the words wouldn’t come out angry. She was sad, she was scared, she wanted to be alone. Why couldn't her roommate leave her alone?

 

Elizavetha heard the commotion, and she stopped her rounds to go to their room. It was dark, but she could see Iszabella standing by her bed like she was lost, and Gilbert was sitting up and trying to apologize to her, but it was falling on deaf ears. She wanted to yell at him, ask him what the hell he’d done that made his roommate cry, but that wasn’t her first priority. Iszabella was her first priority.

 

“Iszabella, come on, let’s get you back to bed,” she walked over to the woman and placed a hand on her shoulder. They were both about the same height, but Iszabella felt tiny next to her. Maybe it was because she was so skinny and fragile. Elizavetha nudged her gently and got her to sit back down. She placed a tissue from the box on the nightstand into her hand, but she did nothing with it. 

 

“I can bring you something to make you sleep, do you want that?” she figured it was a bad idea to try and ask Iszabella what happened. That could be figured out the next morning. 

 

To Iszabella, sleep was better than having to be awake and know Gilbert was next to her and have to think about how to deal with him and get lost in her own thoughts. She nodded, and felt Elizavetha move away from her.

 

“I’ll be right back before you know it. Just breathe for me, okay?” she shot a glare over Iszabella’s shoulder straight to Gilbert. He laid back down and rolled over away from her. If this were anyone else in any other situation, he’d be mad at them for overreacting, but this was different. He couldn't stop running over what had happened. The minute he’d mentioned rape, Iszabella had panicked. No, that wasn’t the right word for it, because she’d looked like she was lost in her mind again after yelling at him, and that was even more scary than a panic attack. He wondered what she was thinking of, if she was maybe hallucinating something or if she was trapped in some sort of nightmare like the one that had woken her up. He wondered if she’d been remembering something.

 

Elizavetha came back with one of the pills Iszabella took nightly so she could sleep, and she took it without complaining, just laying back down and closing her eyes.

 

While she waited to drift off, Iszabella begged for the nightmares to go away.


	6. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am absolutely terrible at planning, and I never actually figured out how this story was going to go, so I'm making up the plot as I go, which is probably not that good. I think I'm getting somewhere, though, so hopefully this will all come together at some point into something resembling a story? I've started reading more fanfiction lately and I always feel like my own writing is very rushed and mediocre compared to what I'm reading, but as I've said, I'm very self-critical. I'm still going to try as hard as I possibly can to improve my writing, because I guess you can never stop improving!
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is more of a bridge into lots of heavier stuff, but at some point I'll get Izsabella and Gilbert to like each other, I promise. There's not too big of a trigger warning for this chapter, just some mild violence and talking about body mutilation.

“What the fuck do you think you were doing?”

 

“Can you just listen to me, Lizzy?”

 

“Don’t call me that here! I’m trying to listen to you, but all I hear is ‘wah wah wah’. I’m starting to regret ever thinking I could trust you,”

 

“I told you I can explain if you just listen and shut your damn mouth,” Gilbert ran a hand through his hair, glaring at Elizavetha in front of him. She was in her telling-off pose, hands on her hips and torso leaning forward. It would be funny if the situation wasn’t so serious. “And I am trustworthy, just ask your husband!”

 

“Don’t bring Roderich into this!”

 

Gilbert rolled his eyes. He watched the woman in front of him slowly ease back so her arms were crossed over her chest. “Fine. Explain what happened, and hurry up. I don’t have much time,”

 

“Iszabella woke up and she was crying, so I asked what was wrong and we started talking, and then I suggested she makes some friends so this place isn't so shitty, and I told her I’d be her friend, and she got mad. I guess I lost my temper and I said something and she freaked out.” That was the short version of events, but he knew Elizavetha would want him to repeat it in more detail now, even though she’d said she didn’t have much time.

 

“What did you say?”

 

“I told her if she thought I was gonna kill her or rape her or something she was wrong and she needed to get over herself,”

 

“If you weren’t a patient I’d slap the shit out of you. You’re the most insensitive asshole I’ve ever met. Roderich was right, you really are a terrible person,” 

 

Gilbert knew he was in danger when Elizavetha stopped yelling and her voice got so level it was nearly robotic. 

 

“I didn't mean to piss her off, okay? She was fine until I said I wouldn't rape her, then she went insane,”

 

“You just don’t get it, do you? That’s not the kind of thing you should say to people, let alone someone in Iszabella’s condition. Oh god…” her voice turned worried as she thought of the woman. When she’d come by the room to grab Gilbert to talk to him, she’d checked on her. Iszabella had been asleep in bed, and she’d looked unnaturally calm. The way sedatives, even mild ones, affected people was always unpleasant to Elizavetha. “Poor thing, I should go check on her, she shouldn't be alone.”

 

She glared at Gilbert again. He was the reason this was happening in the first place. She would have stayed and yelled at him more, too, but she was worried for his roommate. Elizavetha turned and walked away, out of the door of the office they’d slipped into and down the hall to the rooms.

 

When she reached Iszabella’s room, she found the woman still asleep in bed. She sat on the floor next to her and gently nudged her shoulder. “I let you sleep in a little, but you’ve gotta wake up for breakfast,”

 

For a few seconds, Iszabella pretended she was at home. If she overslept, Toris would wake her up just before he went off to work. This wasn't Toris, though, and as soon as she opened her eyes, she was reminded of what had happened the night before. She shook her head, burying her face in the pillow. If she got out of bed, she’d have to face Gilbert.

 

Almost as though she’d read her mind, Elizavetha said, “you can’t just sleep your problems away, you’ve got to get up,”

 

Iszabella nodded. She didn't have a choice, and the longer she waited, the harder it would be to force herself to get out of bed. Reluctantly, she sat up and swung her legs over so her feet touched the floor, and stood up. Elizavetha stood up with her, glancing at the door. She wasn't going to leave Iszabella, not when she didn't know what would happen the next time she saw Gilbert. 

 

“I’ll hang out in here this morning and walk you to breakfast, rather than meeting you there,”

 

Iszabella nodded and knelt down to grab some clothes from the bag Toris had brought her. She picked out a pink sweater and a pair of black leggings, and was about to walk off to the bathroom to change when she heard Elizavetha speak again. “If you want to talk about what happened last night, I’d be glad to listen. Sometimes the best thing to do is talk about stuff and get it off your chest,”

 

Iszabella shook her head. It wasn't that she didn’t want to talk about it; she wished she could trust Elizavetha enough to tell her everything because she hated to make her worry and this wasn't a good thing to keep bottled up inside her. The problem was that she felt like every time she opened her mouth, she made things worse. Just allowing herself to have one conversation with Gilbert had made things spiral out of control.

 

_ “If you don’t shut up, I’ll cut your tongue out,” _

 

_ Iszabella shrank back at the threat, staring at Ivan’s belt where she knew he kept a pocketknife. Her mouth snapped shut and she licked the back of her teeth, just to make sure her tongue was still intact. _

 

_ “You ask too many questions, you cry too much, and you broke my fucking nose. I’d have you killed if you weren’t so pretty,”  _

 

_ “If you cut my tongue out, I’m like, damaged stock. You wouldn’t fucking do it,” Iszabella didn’t know where the courage to say that came from, but she immediately wanted to slap herself. Ivan grabbed her jaw, pressing his calloused fingers against the sides so her mouth was forced open. _

 

_ “Some people like girls who’ve had their tongues cut out. They can’t talk back, and it’s really easy to get a dick down their throat. Maybe I could take your teeth out too, then I could just use you for blowjobs.” _

 

_ Iszabella winced at the sound of a switchblade being flicked open. The knife was shoved into her mouth under her tongue, so she was forced to hold it up against the back of her mouth so she wouldn’t get cut. She could taste blood, coming from a small cut on the bottom of her tongue. _

 

_ “This will shut you up. If you don’t hold the knife in place for let’s say… thirty minutes, I’ll cut your tongue out. This should be fun,” Ivan smiled and bile rose in Iszabella’s throat.  _

 

Elizavetha watched nervously as Iszabella stopped what she was doing and just stood there. Her eyes weren’t focused on anything, but the fear in her expression was unmistakable.

 

“Iszabella?” she walked over to her and gently shook her shoulder. The woman didn't respond or even acknowledge that anyone was there. “Iszabella!” she tried again, more sharply this time. It brought her back to reality, but this time with tears in her eyes and a burning in her mouth.

 

“Oh, Iszabella, I didn't mean to upset you,” she hugged her, but was met with a hand on her stomach pushing her away. Elizavetha pulled back with a frown. 

 

Iszabella shook her head in an attempt to say that it wasn't Elizavetha’s fault, that she’d caused her own problems because she wouldn't shut up when she was supposed to and every time she spoke she dug herself deeper and deeper into a hole, but Elizavetha didn’t interpret it that way. “I’m sorry. If you want me to leave you alone, I can go to the cafeteria now and you can meet me there.”

 

Again, Iszabella shook her head. She didn't want to be alone, not in this room where Gilbert could enter whenever he wanted and try to get her talking. 

 

Elizavetha sighed a little and went to sit down on the bed. She wasn’t mad at Iszabella, there was no way she could be, but she was getting frustrated about the fact that she wouldn’t talk or tell her what was wrong. “I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Knowing that put Iszabella at ease. She took her clothes into the bathroom and changed as quickly as she could manage to with her broken arm, turned away from the mirror. When she walked out, Elizavetha was still there on top of her bed.

 

“You look pretty,” she remarked, but Iszabella didn't feel pretty. It would be more accurate to say that her outfit was pretty. Silence fell between them and it was uncomfortable. Elizavetha was used to conversation, and they could spend hours talking about celebrities they liked or horses or clothes they thought were cute. It was unusual for Iszabella to be so quiet.

 

“Come on, let’s go to breakfast,” Elizavetha said. She stood up and walked to Iszabella's side, standing close to her because she imagined she was scared. 

 

There was a schedule for the patients to follow, and while it wasn't all that strict as a whole, mealtimes were very rigid requirements for eating disorder patients. Iszabella had to go to breakfast, lunch, and dinner accompanied by Elizavetha, and then she couldn't be out of her sight for an hour afterwards. Even though she ate as little as she could get away with, Iszabella still felt sick from overeating after nearly every meal and constantly worried she was going to start gaining weight and be unable to stop.

 

They walked to the cafeteria and Elizavetha tried to ask Iszabella if she thought anything looked good, but she shook her head and tried to ignore her. Food wasn't something that looked good. It was something that dug a pit of dread in her stomach. The food here was barely even edible, and she found herself missing Toris’s cooking. 

 

Before she knew it, Iszabella was sitting with a tray full of food in front of her, and Elizavetha was across from her, watching. If there was anything worse than being forced to eat, it was being forced to have someone watch her eat. 

 

“I don't want this,” she mumbled, setting down her fork. Just looking at the bacon and eggs made her want to do something drastic. She wanted to cry or throw the tray at Elizavetha or just run away. Maybe if she ran enough, she could go right out of the hospital and run home.

 

_ “We’re here to get better, and when we do we can go home and be better people.” _

 

Gilbert’s words from the night before came back and she frowned. Why did he of all people have to make an impression on her?

 

“I’m sorry, Iszabella, but you’ve got to eat,” Elizavetha picked up the fork and pressed it back into her hand.

 

“I can’t,” she swallowed and her stomach tossed and turned like the ocean in a storm.

 

“At least have some fruit, you like fruit,” Elizavetha pushed the cup of strawberries at the back of Iszabella’s tray closer to her. Part of her wanted to say that they could skip breakfast and just sit in the common area until she was supposed to walk Iszabella to her therapist’s office, but she wasn’t about to let the woman lapse back into bad habits. The most she could do was let her get away with not finishing her food, and she’d only do that if she really, really couldn’t eat it.

 

The strawberries looked manageable, and they would have been had it been any other day, but Gilbert’s words were ringing in Iszabella’s ears until all that was left was his voice; his stupid, annoying, scratchy voice. “I can’t,” her voice was just a whisper and she was doing everything to hold the floodgates closed so she wouldn’t start crying.

 

Elizavetha finally caved. She hated seeing Iszabella cry, and didn’t want to make her go back to one of her memories or anything bad like that. “We’ll try again at lunch, okay?” 

 

Relief washed over Iszabella and she nodded. Even though she knew she’d have no choice but to eat then, she could at least put things off for a few hours.

 

Not wanting to waste food, Elizavetha finished off what was on the plate and then got up with Iszabella, who looked like she wanted to run out of the cafeteria and never return. “Come on, we can find something to do until you go to therapy,” she said, smiling for the other woman’s sake. Most of the patients went to group therapy in the mornings, which was optional. Iszabella absolutely refused to even set foot near it, because there were too many people and she just knew that she couldn’t trust any of them. Instead, she and Elizavetha would sit together in one of the common areas or in her room and do something.

 

This time, they ended up in the common area, since there was less likelihood of finding Gilbert there than there was of finding him in their room. Even though the ward was for adults, there were coloring pages and pencils and a few men were sitting around, drawing or coloring or writing. It was really just a calming activity, and it was one of the few things Iszabella would spend her time doing. She sat next to Elizavetha on the floor with their backs against the wall, each of them holding a book with a coloring sheet on top. 

 

They sat in silence for awhile, Iszabella focused on drawing more unicorns to accompany the one she’d colored in. Elizavetha was the one to finally break the silence.

 

“I just want to tell you that everything’s gonna turn out okay. Things might seem shitty now, but I’m gonna make sure they get better. I’m trying to have you transferred to a different therapist. I think you’ll like the one I have in mind, he’s really nice,” 

 

Iszabella looked up, setting down the pastel pink pencil she was holding. There weren’t words for how grateful she was that she had someone on her side. She leaned to the side, laying her head against Elizavetha’s shoulder and letting their arms brush. “Thank you so much,” she murmured, though that didn’t seem at all adequate.

 

“And I talked to Gilbert, I told him to keep his dumb mouth shut. My husband was his roommate in college, he acts like that towards everyone. Never knows when to stop talking,” she shook her head exasperatedly and it earned a small giggle from Iszabella. In the past, she’d been told plenty that she talked too much for her own good, but she was nothing like Gilbert. At least she was smart enough that she didn’t say anything extremely rude or insensitive.

 

“I guess he is just an asshole,” Iszabella laughed and set the colored pencil back in the box, fishing around a little until she found a gold one. Even if she still didn’t want to be around Gilbert at all, it was at least nice to pretend she could brush him off easily. 

 

Time seemed to fly now that the tension was gone, and the two women spent the rest of the morning talking about Elizavetha’s husband and her wedding and what Iszabella would want for her wedding if she were to ever get married to someone. It felt nice to have a light conversation with someone, since as of late Iszabella had spent too much time on serious subjects. She’d forgotten what it was like to just gossip with friends, and even though her friend was a nurse who had to follow her around so she didn’t throw up and they were stuck in a hospital surrounded by patients who made her more than a little uncomfortable, it was the closest thing she had to normal.

 

Elizavetha almost forgot about Iszabella’s therapy appointment, and was only reminded when the alarm for that on her phone buzzed. The walk down to the office was silent, and she could feel Iszabella tense up next to her, her smile gone. She was picking at more of the cotton lining of her cast, something she’d taken to doing whenever she was nervous.

 

“Come in, we have lots to talk about and very little time, so we need to start immediately,” Iszabella was ushered in by her therapist, who closed the door behind her and went to sit behind his desk. He didn’t bother asking how she was or what she’d done, he just searched around in his drawer before pulling out a file with her name on it and going through the contents. He was making a show of it, and it made Iszabella even more uncomfortable than she already was.

 

“Alright, what can you tell me about this?” he pushed something forward onto the table and Iszabella glanced at it warily. It was a printout of an article, and the headline made her stomach twist into knots.

 

**Businessman Ivan Braginsky, 35, Arrested on Charges of Sex Trafficking - April 21st, 2015**


	7. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I mentioned I'm absolutely horrible at writing slow burns? I feel like I may be taking this too fast but it's how the story came to me.
> 
> This chapter is really heavy and I'll be honest and say I had a really difficult time writing it. My only experience with PTSD is with myself, and when I talk about my own trauma I tend to just ramble and I feel like my voice is going to crack any second or I'll just start crying but for some reason I can't, so that kind of explains the way Iszabella talks. If I get some things wrong, I'm super sorry, please let me know in a comment if I have. Anyway, Trigger warning for some mild violence and mentions of past rape, kidnapping, and forced sex work.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, and then finally, a familiar voice picked up.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey, peanut bruder. How’re you doing?” 

 

“Can you please not call me that?”

 

“You’re my baby brother, I can call you whatever I want.”

 

“Please, Gilbert, I’m not a child.”

 

“You’re still my baby brother,” Gilbert laughed and leaned against the wall, twirling the phone cord around his finger like he was a teenage girl.

 

There was silence on the other end for a moment, before Ludwig spoke again. “I missed hearing your voice,”

 

“I’ll be back home before you know it,” he sighed and thought for a moment about what he said. It wasn’t a flat-out lie, but it wasn’t the truth either. He wasn’t making fast progress on his therapy and there would still be a few weeks before he was released, but compared to some of the stays the other patients would have, he would be out in no time.

 

“Will you be back in time for the spring musical? I’m not in it, but I helped build sets. Apparently I’m the tech team’s German engineer now,”

 

Gilbert wanted to laugh at that, but his stomach twisted and he frowned. “I don’t know,” he replied, because he didn’t want to say no. It sucked that he couldn’t be there for his younger brother, even just for the little things he did with his extracurriculars. At that age, Gilbert had been busy getting into trouble, so now he just focused on being proud of Ludwig.

 

“Are you doing better?”

 

“Yeah. I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to talk about you, tell me what’s going on at school. How’re your friends?” it was unusual for Gilbert to not want to talk about himself, but it hurt to have to tell his little brother about life in the hospital. He didn’t want to make things any harder for him than they already were.

 

As Ludwig began talking, Gilbert swore he heard something like hands being slammed down on a desk. Even though his brother was in the middle of telling him about the grade he’d gotten on a physics test, Gilbert shushed him and pressed his hand over the phone’s speaker. There was yelling, coming from Dr. Kirkland’s office, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear sobbing. “Shit, I gotta go,” he didn’t even offer an explanation as to why, he just hung up the phone and ran to open the door.

 

Iszabella was sitting in a chair in front of the desk, and her therapist was holding a fistfull of her hair, forcing her to look at him. He was yelling at her to “answer the goddamn question!” but he stopped mid-sentence when Gilbert came in and shoved him away from the patient.

 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shoved Kirkland back into his swivel chair and punched him, right in the jaw.

 

“Did you just…” he heard Iszabella’s voice behind him and looked down, realizing the therapist was laying back in the chair completely unconscious. 

 

Rather than freak out, Gilbert just shrugged. “He deserved it,” he replied, before turning around to Iszabella. She was still sitting where she had been when he’d come in, with her legs pressed against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her eyes were red from crying. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice much softer this time. He walked around the desk to close the door, since being caught with a knocked out doctor would definitely not be good for the two of them.

 

Iszabella wanted to lie and say she was fine like she always did, but something was stopping her. Even though she was still angry at Gilbert for the comments he’d made the night before and the memories he’d brought back, he’d just done something extremely nice for her. He at least deserved some honesty. “No,” she mumbled, staring down at her knees. If she made eye contact, she knew she’d start crying again.

 

“Shit, what did he do to you?” Gilbert sat on top of the desk right in front of her and tentatively reached forward to smooth out her hair where it had been grabbed. She flinched away at first, before realizing he wasn’t going to hurt her and staying still. That wasn’t exactly something she wanted to talk about, but the article was sitting on the desk right next to Gilbert and she figured he’d put the pieces together soon and then she’d have no choice but to tell him everything. The thought of it made her nauseous, so she pushed it into the back of her mind. For now, she could stall.

 

“Why are you here?”

 

“I was on the phones and I heard something slam on the table and yelling, and my instincts just kinda kicked in to figure out what was going on,”

 

Iszabella bit her lip and nodded. It made her feel better to know that he went in not knowing who was in there. It at least proved that he wasn’t following her around and deliberately trying to bother her.

 

Gilbert glanced behind him at the doctor. He wasn’t showing any sign of stirring, which was good… or bad, depending on how one looked at it. At least he doubted the punch could cause any severe damage. As he turned back to Iszabella, something caught his eye. He grabbed a piece of paper on the otherwise nearly empty desk, skimming over it. 

 

“Is this what he was yelling at you about?” he asked.

 

The word felt stuck in Iszabella’s throat. The minute she said it, he’d know everything. No, she couldn’t say it. She could barely bring herself to nod, but she did. If only she could run, but her therapist was knocked out behind them and she didn’t want to get Gilbert in trouble for that. She’d have to stick it out, no matter how awful it was.

 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Gilbert reached out to touch Iszabella’s cheek like he’d do with his brother whenever he was upset, but decided against it and pulled his hand back. 

 

“No it’s not,” she started crying again, and Gilbert had no idea what to do. It seemed like he couldn’t say anything without it upsetting her.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

 

Iszabella couldn’t help but remember what had happened the last time she’d given in to talking about him. And this was so much more than a small conversation, she’d have to tell him why she was there and what the article had to do with her and she didn’t think she was ready to talk about those things ever again, especially not with a roommate who she had barely even been able to tolerate.

 

Then again, he’d been nothing but kind to her. She knew she tended to overreact, she knew there was probably no reason for her to be so scared of Gilbert. When he’d said things that were too personal or intrusive, she knew rationally he hadn’t actually meant to. 

 

“I… no. No, I mean yes, I mean I don’t know,” she bit her lip when the words came out of their own accord. She’d lost control over her mouth, it was just talking for her now even when she knew the best thing to do was shut up.

 

“If you want to talk, I promise I’ll listen. I know you’re going through some shit, I mean we all are. I know I am,”

 

“No. Your shit’s not like mine. It’s like, it’s not as bad,” Iszabella bit her lip harder this time. If Toris was there, he would have told her she was throwing herself a pity party. She missed Toris, she just wanted it to be visiting hour so she could sit with him and talk to him and pretend things were even just a little normal. But visiting hour wasn’t until after dinner and she had to focus on what was going on right then and there. 

 

“My shit isn’t better or worse than yours, it’s just different.”

 

“Yeah, well what’s your shit? What got you stuck in here,” again, she was stalling. She’d seen the scars on his arms because he wore t-shirts a lot of the time, she knew he’d been hurting himself. There was no reason to ask questions, but the more time they could spend not talking about her, the better.

 

“You really want to know?” Gilbert raised an eyebrow at her. Sure, he’d talked about this with his therapist and at group therapy and his family knew, but for some reason he wasn’t so sure he wanted to tell Iszabella. She nodded, though, and he decided he at least owed her that. Whatever was going on with her was probably much more difficult to talk about. “I tried to kill myself,” he admitted, before taking in another deep breath. “Everything was just going terrible, I dropped out of college and lost my job, I started at a technical school and my dad got angry because he thinks people who go there will never amount to anything good. My roommate left ‘cause he moved in with his girlfriend. Well, wife now. He’s married to the nurse you like. I was stuck alone in my apartment, though, and I just pushed everything down until I couldn’t and I stole my dad’s stuff for his back pain and I just took it all,” he looked down at Iszabella, blinking back tears. There was no way he’d let himself cry in front of her.

 

“I had no idea,” she murmured, and he could tell she was genuinely concerned for him now.

 

“I’m glad it didn’t work. My friend was worried because I didn’t answer his texts and he found me and called an ambulance, and when I woke up from everything I realized if I died I’d be leaving so many people behind. I’d be leaving my little brother behind,” his voice cracked and he felt a hand on his knee. 

 

There was heavy silence between them, Iszabella pulled her hand away and stared down at the floor. Gilbert had just been so vulnerable with her, and now she just felt like the right thing to do was tell him her story. The words tumbled out of her before she knew what was happening, and she felt strangely detached. It was like it had been in the courtroom, when she’d had to testify. There was no emotion, just her voice wobbling and shaking like the legs of a newborn deer.

 

“I was sixteen and I was stupid and I used to sneak out at night and go to gay clubs because I could dress up and not be told I was going against the word of god or like, going through a phase or something. I met this guy who told me he could get me hormones and surgery, because in Poland you have to have that to get your sex changed legally, and I guess I was so excited that I didn’t think I was putting myself in any danger. I let him take me to his house and like, he offered me a drink and I guess he put something in it because that was all I remember, and then I was in a car and I was tied up and I didn’t know what was going on. He took me to a hotel and he said if I did what he told me to he’d get me what I wanted faster except I didn’t… I…” 

 

She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Gilbert wondered if he’d pushed her too much, and he was about to tell her she didn’t need to keep going if she didn’t want to when she started again, her voice strained like she was about to cry.

 

“He took my underwear off and I didn’t know what to do so I just punched him and it was right in his nose and there was like, a lot of blood and he got really angry and told me he’d kill me if he could,” she stopped again, raising a shaky hand to wipe at her eyes. “He didn’t hurt me or anything because he said he couldn’t use me if I was hurt, so he just grabbed my arms and held me down and he made me have sex with him. And then I don’t know how long, but it kept happening for days and days until I stopped trying to fight back and I just let him do what he wanted,” her cheeks burned with shame as the memories came back. She paused and curled up with her legs against her chest again, hiding her face behind an arm.

 

“You don’t have to talk about this anymore if you don’t want to,” Gilbert frowned as he looked down at Iszabella. He hadn’t known what to expect, he didn’t know what she was going to tell him, but what she was saying horrified him.

 

For a moment, Iszabella thought about saying she wanted to stop and just leaving and trying to pretend she’d never said a thing, but something was holding her back. She didn’t know why, but for some reason it felt good to tell someone about this. By no means did she trust Gilbert, that was something she’d probably never be able to do, but he was listening to her, and she realized she needed this; she needed to have her voice heard, even if it was just by one person.

 

“He took me on a plane and I guess I was excited because I’d never been on one before, but I didn’t know where he was taking me and when we landed he made me get in a car and he drove for hours and I guess I like, fell asleep, because when I woke up I was in another room in a house and there were a ton of other people and the windows were shut and the door was locked and he came back in and told me I was gonna have to do  _ that  _ more, except I had to get money and he said if I brought back a certain amount he’d give me hormones but if I couldn’t bring back enough and I wasn’t useful to him he’d kill me,” 

 

Gilbert frowned more. He didn’t understand how someone could be so cruel, even if he got money out of it. He had a sudden urge to punch the guy who did this to Iszabella, to leave him knocked out like he’d left Kirkland, but he knew if he started, he’d never be able to stop.

 

“I ended up being a prostitute and I still can’t stop thinking about it because I didn’t want to, but I had to and now I’m just… no one’s ever gonna want me now. And after it all ended I didn’t know how to go back into the world and I was gonna try to finish high school but I couldn’t do the classes,” she sniffled and when Gilbert met her eyes, he realized she’d started to cry. “And then things just got worse and I’d gotten so used to not having food that I couldn’t stop eating it and I knew I needed to go on a diet so I just did one and then I got way too into it and I couldn’t stop and like, now I’m here and I fucked everything up for myself,”

 

Everything was silent when she’d finished talking. Iszabella was squeezing her mouth shut so tight that her jaw hurt, and she kept her face hidden. She was waiting, but she didn’t know what for. 

 

“You’re really fucking brave,”

 

“I…” Iszabella forced herself to look up at Gilbert. She was convinced he was just saying that to mock her or because he had some other ulterior motive, but he just looked shocked and concerned and a little unsettled.

 

“I mean you’ve been to hell and back and you’re still here,”

 

She shook her head, biting down on her lip again. The real Iszabella was gone, she’d been left back in Poland with her family and her friends and her horse and everything she’d had before Ivan came and took it all away. The real Iszabella loved going to the mall and liked to talk a lot to the people she was close to. Now it took a lot of coaxing to get her out of the house because she was scared someone would know she was connected to the Braginsky case (it had received a lot of attention because he’d been running a giant sex trafficking operation in Eastern Europe and the United States) or someone would kidnap her again. She couldn’t bring herself to talk much to anyone anymore either, even Toris. She wasn’t Iszabella anymore, she wasn’t still there as the same person she’d been seven years ago.

 

“You can think I’m wrong all you want, but I really, really think you’re brave. I never really followed the news or anything when this was all happening,” he gestured to the article about Ivan, “but it takes guts to get through that and then talk about it with some guy you barely know.”

 

Gilbert was about to say more, but the sound of someone shifting behind him caught him off guard. He turned to see the therapist with his eyes open, blinking with confusion and holding his head.

 

“Why did you knock me out?” he asked, having realized what happened.

 

“You were being an asshole to Iszabella. She doesn’t need that right now. In fact, you’re an asshole to all your patients, from what I’ve heard about you. Why the hell did you become a therapist if you can’t even figure out how to be nice to people?”

 

“I could have you arrested for this, you know. This is assault,”

 

“And I’d march my ass into court and tell them I was defending someone. You grabbed my roommate’s hair, you yelled at her, if I hadn’t come in I don’t know what you could have done,”

 

“Oh please, you wouldn’t have even a semblance of a case against me,”

 

“My father’s a lawyer,” Gilbert crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, assuming he had Kirkland beat.

 

The therapist sighed and held his head in his hands before moving to run a hand along his jaw. The punch would surely leave a nasty bruise, and Gilbert was honestly proud of that. If there was anyone deserving of injury, it was Kirkland.

 

“Just get out. Both of you!” the therapist barked, and Gilbert got up from his seat on top of the desk and started towards the door. Iszabella followed behind him, just wanting to get out of there. She didn’t know what else she wanted, though. Her hands were still shaking from the memories she’d dredged up in telling Gilbert about her past, and she knew if she was alone she wouldn’t be able to stop them from taking over. She didn’t want to be around people either, though. 

 

When the pair were back in the hallway, Gilbert turned to his roommate and looked down at her. He wondered if he should just leave her alone, but decided against leaving her. If she wanted to get away from him, he knew she would have.

 

Finally, he broke the silence, asking a question that had been on the tip of his tongue when the therapist had awoken. “Have you told anyone else here?”

 

Iszabella shook her head. She’d thought about telling Elizavetha, but the problem was that she trusted her too much. They were like friends, at least as much like friends as she could get here, and she didn’t want her to know all of this and suddenly see her as a completely different person.

 

Gilbert wasn’t going to pressure her into talking to anyone else, since he could tell that it had been hard enough for her to just talk to him. He decided on just changing the subject, since he didn’t want her to dwell on what she’d told him. “You wanna come eat lunch with me? At least until Elizavetha shows up?” he asked, offering a smile.

 

Iszabella shrugged, before deciding she had nothing to lose. She’d have to go to lunch no matter what, and at least she was on good terms with him now. “I guess,” she replied, following behind him as he started to walk to the cafeteria. “We should have like, waxed Kirkland’s eyebrows while he was knocked out. He really needs it,” she murmured, not expecting Gilbert to hear. He did, though, and responded with a loud laugh.

 

“Want me to knock him out again so you can do it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know (I researched) that if someone is knocked out and they don't wake up a minute or so afterwards, they've likely sustained severe brain damage, and if we went by the way things work in real life, Kirkland would not be able to wake up perfectly fine after being knocked out for at least fifteen minutes. But this isn't real life, so for the sake of the story, I had Kirkland stay knocked out much longer than the average person can safely without sustaining any severe brain damage.


	8. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who is reading! I've currently got a partner fic in the works that focuses on Toris, and the first chapter should be out in the next few days!
> 
> A few other updates:  
> School is starting again and I'm about to be spending a semester abroad!!! I'm super excited but also very nervous. This might throw my update schedule (though I didn't exactly have one in the first place) out of whack, since I'll be a lot busier than I am now.  
> I started another fanfic with another rarepair that I absolutely love. My PolHun fic is called What to Expect When Everything's Unexpected and it's much lighter and fluffier than this one. Stay on the lookout for more chapter updates for that one!
> 
> Anyways, thanks so much to you guys for reading. Watching the number of hits on my works go up and up just makes my day! I also love seeing your guys's comments, so please please please don't feel shy about giving some constructive criticism or even just a quick comment!

Getting a new therapist for Iszabella had taken a lot of paperwork and flat-out begging. Elizavetha had spent far too long on the phone with her superiors at the hospital, trying to convince them that a little bit of switching patients and changing schedules would be worth it. She kept at it, though, working even harder after Gilbert told her why he’d had to knock Kirkland out. 

 

The therapist had a horrible bruise on his face from the altercation and a minor concussion which kept him out of work for a few days. When he came back, he at least had enough sense to keep his mouth shut about what had happened. He knew if he did take Gilbert to court, he’d never win, because the reason he’d been knocked out in the first place would come up.

 

Iszabella was extremely hesitant about going to a new therapist. Her old one had joined Ivan in her nightmares, grabbing at her and shoving memories in her face. She was scared the new one would be just like him, prying into things that weren’t his business and reminding her that she wasn’t where she wanted to be in her transition.

 

This one was different, though. She could tell the minute she’d stepped into his office and there wasn’t a desk anywhere in sight. There were beanbags and fluffy armchairs with the type of throw pillows she loved decorating her bed at home with. He asked her to sit down and when she sat in an armchair close enough to the door that she could run out if she needed to, he got comfortable in a beanbag across from her. 

 

“So you’re Iszabella? I’m Tino, you don’t need to call me by my last name because I have two and they’re both very difficult to say,” he smiled at her and she looked up at him briefly. He was smaller than her, so she knew she could at least have a chance if he tried to take advantage of her. No, she had to stop thinking that way. She’d been able to trust Gilbert, and he’d proved that he had enough strength to kill someone if he wanted to. She forced herself to remember that not everyone was out to hurt her.

 

Iszabella nodded and braced herself, waiting to be told that she needed to speak up or make eye contact, but instead she just got a soft hum in reply. 

 

“I’m not going to get into anything really serious right now. I want to get to know you first, and I want you to get to know me, so we’ll just spend awhile talking about ourselves. How does that sound?”

 

Iszabella fidgeted with her cast. By now, the part over her thumb had nearly been picked off, she’d been fidgeting with it so much. At least she was supposed to have it off at the end of the week. She didn’t know how to answer his question, because talking about herself had to mean talking about the serious kinds of things he’d said he wasn’t ready to get into. If she said yes, she’d be lying, but she was scared he’d be mad if she said no. 

 

“It’s okay if you’re not ready to talk to me yet. We can do something that doesn’t involve talking. I’ve got games, puzzles... ooh, I got a brand new jigsaw one that’s got puppies on it, we should do that one!” Tino got up from his beanbag and grabbed a box off of one of the shelves in the office, before moving to a coffee table in the middle of the room. It felt childish to do a puzzle, but Iszabella couldn’t resist joining him when he’d dumped all the pieces out onto the table and was sorting through them to make piles based on color. 

 

“You’ve got to find like, all the pieces that go on the sides and make a frame,” she said softly, starting to go through his piles to find end pieces. When she was young and it was too snowy to go outside, her father would get out puzzles and they’d spend hours putting them together. She tended to be good at them, since she had a strategy for how to put them together.

 

By the end of the hour when it was time for Iszabella to leave, the puzzle was almost completely finished, save for a corner where there was a puppy holding a bone in its mouth. She’d only spoken when it had to do with the puzzle, but she’d been able to relax more around her new therapist and actually focus for once. It was a nice feeling.

 

Iszabella returned to her room with a smile on her face. Gilbert was on his bed, writing in his journal, but he looked up when she came in and closed the notebook, setting it to the side. “So, how was it?” he asked.

 

She shrugged, sitting down on her own bed. Since the day Iszabella had opened up to him, she’d started to allow Gilbert to get a little closer to her, to the point she considered him a friend. They had real conversations now, even if they were a little one-sided, and Gilbert sometimes sat with Iszabella at meals, even though that was when she was at her least talkative.

 

Gilbert had come to realize she was a very different person than the one she appeared to be at first. Even though she was still very closed off around him, he’d learned she had a good sense of humor and knew practically everything there was to know about horses.

 

“He had to have been better than the last one,”

 

“Yeah, he was. We did a puzzle, but not like, any real therapy stuff,”

 

“That is real therapy stuff. He was probably doing it to get to know you. Although… I don’t really know how much you can learn about a person from a puzzle,” Gilbert laughed and he heard Iszabella giggle a little at that. 

 

“The only therapy I like is retail therapy,” she replied. The remark caused Gilbert to laugh more, at which point Iszabella couldn’t help but start actually laughing. “Seriously, I really miss going shopping. By the time I get out of this place, I’m gonna have to like, replace my entire closet because all my clothes will be out of style!”

 

“Is it a ‘have to’ or a ‘want to’?” Gilbert asked in retaliation, which earned him a glare from Iszabella. It was a joking one, though, and she burst out laughing almost as soon as he raised one of his eyebrows at her.

 

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, Iszabella moving her pillows so she could sit with her back against them. She wrapped her blanket around her shoulders like a cape, since to her the room felt quite cold.

 

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

 

Iszabella glanced up at Gilbert, who was making eye contact with her. She was still getting used to the way he’d preface his questions, sounding extremely serious before asking something almost ridiculously silly. The last time he’d done that, she’d been terrified he was going to get intrusive and try to get her to talk about things she didn’t want to talk about, but he’d just wanted to know if he could sign her cast. She’d been so relieved that she said yes, which resulted in ‘I am awesome -Gilbert’ being written in black sharpie right where everyone could see it. If it weren’t for the fact that the albino was much, much stronger than her, she would have punched the narcissism right out of him.

 

“Yeah, I guess,”

 

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

 

She sucked in a breath, wondering what in the world had compelled him to ask that question. Toris had let her know that he’d made it clear to Gilbert that they were not dating, so him wanting to know about that was out of the question. 

 

Relationships were rocky territory now, and it was the exact kind of thing Iszabella did not want to talk about. She didn’t think Gilbert was expecting this to be a difficult conversation, though, since the question seemed innocent enough. Of course, she had to remind herself of that. Gilbert never asked her anything with malicious intent, he was just too damn curious for his own good.

 

Iszabella sighed and decided the best thing to do was stall. Even though by now Gilbert could tell when she was doing it, it would give her more time to think about how to talk about dating. “Who said I like boys?”

 

“So you’re a lesbian now? I’ve never met a lesbian who looks at Liam Hemsworth the way you do,” he smirked, knowing from the startled look on Iszabella’s face that he’d caught her trying to lie to him. He could tell she was stalling, though, and figured answering his question entailed getting into something serious. Even though he knew he should back off, something in him just couldn’t leave his question unanswered. “So, do you have a boyfriend?”

 

“No.” she paused, biting her lip. “And I don’t think it’s gonna happen,”

 

“Is it because of what happened to you?”

 

“Yeah, kinda. It’s other stuff, too,”

 

“Like?” 

 

Iszabella pursed her lips and stared ahead of her at the blank white wall. She didn’t know if she wanted to get into it because it was the kind of thing he’d never understand. 

 

“Like I’m trans, and finding a boyfriend isn’t as simple as it is for cis girls-”

 

“Cis?” 

 

“Not trans. Like you, you’re a cis man. But a lot of the guys who would want to go on a date with me just want to get me in bed with them. They think it’s like, cool to have sex with trans girls because they think it’s like pushing the boundary of almost having sex with a guy, but not quite. And I have to tell people I’m trans, because like, it could be dangerous if I didn’t and then they found out some other way. I’ve heard of people who went on dates and got beat up or raped or killed,” her voice got softer and she stared down at her hands. She really hoped Gilbert wouldn’t start getting defensive and trying to convince her that not all men were that way. The way she saw it, it was better to be safe than sorry.

 

There was silence from next to her and she turned her head to look at Gilbert. He was frowning, looking towards her but not at her as he thought.

 

“It’s shitty that someone would treat you that way,”

 

Iszabella shrugged. “It’s reality,”

 

“It’s not a good reality. You deserve better.” Gilbert was honestly appalled at everything his roommate was telling him. He’d hoped things had gotten better for her after she’d been able to get away from Ivan, but from what she told him, it hadn’t. He’d already heard about the trouble she was having finding a job without even a high school diploma and how her fear of strangers complicated that further because she couldn’t take any job that involved interaction with customers. She’d also vaguely spoken about the strain her eating disorder had put on her relationship with Toris, but had refused to say anything more about it than that.

 

“I don’t know if I do,” she admitted with a soft sigh. If she did manage to find someone to date who didn’t care that she was trans, she’d have to tell them about her past at some point.

 

“Why not?”

 

“I’m just… I’m dirty. No one wants someone that’s been used up and pushed around,”

 

Gilbert sighed. He knew it was true. Very few of the people he knew would be willing to date a former prostitute, and he knew that if he hadn’t met Iszabella, he wouldn’t be willing to either. 

 

“I would date you,” he said this casually, but Iszabella turned red and looked startled.

 

“You’re saying that to keep me happy,” her voice was stiff and suddenly distant.

 

“No, I’m not. I mean, I definitely would not right now, but if I met you outside of here, I would ask you on a date. I mean, maybe not, but I got to know you here and you’ve got a great personality,”

 

“You don’t want to date me. You know too much about me, and that would just ruin things. Anyway, I like, don’t even think I’m ready to date. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,”

 

There was another pause, another tense silence between them. Iszabella kept hearing his words, again and again. He said he’d date her. It would have made her uncomfortable if it weren’t for the fact that there was something slightly reassuring about the knowledge. Even if she only liked Gilbert because she was stuck with him and just needed someone on her side who understood what she was going through as a patient, it was nice to know that he would date her. After all, would was very different than wanted to.

 

“What do you want in your future?”

 

“Huh?” she was mostly startled by the sudden change in topic.

 

“What do you want in your future?”

 

Iszabella puffed up her cheeks and slowly blew the air out. “Horses, reassignment surgery. A degree in something, and maybe a husband and a family. But like, just because I want it doesn’t mean I’ll have it,”

 

“You won’t have those things if you keep thinking that way,”

 

“You sound like a self help book,”

 

“Well, you are what you read,”

 

Iszabella chuckled at that. If there was one thing Gilbert was really useful for, it was making her laugh and taking her mind off of the things she tended to dwell on, like how uncertain her future was.

 

“I’m serious about the fact that I would date you. When we’re both out of here, I want to take you on a date, even just as a friend, so you can at least say you’ve had a good date with a guy. Or so you can say you’ve been on a date with the awesomest guy on Earth,” Gilbert shot her a sly grin, and her face turned red.


	9. 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a bit of a heavier chapter, mostly for talking about eating disorders. I've made the executive decision that this story won't take place exclusively in the hospital, and I'm getting a bit better about planning ahead, so I kind of know what my long-term goals for the direction of this story are.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for reading! I love seeing your comments and kudos! If you still can't get enough of this story, I'm writing a partner fic that focuses on Toris, called Stretching The Truth. Please let me know what you think of it!

Gilbert had no idea why he woke up, but he could almost immediately tell that something was wrong. It was really just a gut feeling, and it turned out to be right when he heard the soft sound of muffled crying. He got up and rubbed his eyes, blinking a few times until he could see clearly. Sheets were pushed to the side on Iszabella’s bed, and he knew she wasn’t in it. Gilbert got up and followed the sound until he reached the bathroom. The lights were off and he could just make out a figure on the floor in front of the toilet.

 

“Iszabella?” 

 

The figure nodded and shifted so she was hiding her face. Gilbert sat down on the cold tile and scooted towards her, the bitter stench of vomit hitting him almost immediately. “What happened?” he asked, frowning. From what he’d seen, she was doing well and had put all this behind her.

 

“Leave me alone,” her voice was strained and it crackled with sadness. The way she said it wasn’t completely sincere because, in truth, Iszabella didn’t want to be left alone.

 

“Come on, you should rinse with some water or something,” Gilbert reached out a tentative hand, pausing for a moment before setting it on her shoulder. At first she moved away from it, but Gilbert started rubbing little circles and she reminded herself that he wasn’t there to hurt her. She let him take her hand and help her stand up, even allowing herself to lean into his touch because her legs were shaking and she felt like she couldn’t stay standing without him there to support her. There were dixie cups on the sink in case they needed a drink, and she accepted the one he handed to her, filled with lukewarm water from the sink.

 

The only sound between them for what seemed like the longest time was Iszabella sniffling softly and Gilbert gently shushing her. He had so many questions, he wanted to know what was wrong and why she’d suddenly destroyed all the progress he thought she’d made. He wanted to know why she was doing this to herself and how he could help her get better because it was awful to see someone reduced to nothing. He knew this wasn’t the right time to talk, because there were still tears in his roommate’s eyes and she was shaking like a leaf.

 

“I’m okay.” Gilbert could tell from the way she said it that she wasn’t okay, that she was far from okay, and he was familiar with hearing the phrase said that way because he’d spent years telling people he was okay when he wasn’t. And it had caused him to end up here. He wasn’t going to let someone else get away with doing the same thing, not when he could tell she was hurting.

 

He waited to speak until he’d walked her back to her bed and was sitting at the foot of it as she pulled the covers up to her waist. She was shaking, but now he could tell it was from shivering. “Are you cold?” he asked softly.

 

Iszabella nodded and he was quick to grab the sweatshirt she had folded over the end of the bed and hand it to her. She put it on, finding the warmth comforting. 

 

“What happened? Why were you throwing up?”

 

Iszabella hid her face again and shook her head. She was ashamed, she was scared, she was unsure. She started crying again, or maybe she’d just never stopped and was suddenly aware of it again.

 

“I’m going to have to get Elizavetha and tell her about this,”

 

“No!” Iszabella clamped a hand over her mouth after realizing she’d raised her voice, and the two sat silently for a few seconds, straining to try to hear footsteps or any other indication that they’d been heard. “I-I don’t want her to know,” she mumbled, voice softer this time. She felt like she’d be letting Elizavetha down if she let her know that all her efforts to get her to eat regularly had been for nothing.

 

Gilbert sighed and nodded. It wasn’t his place to go talking about her problems, anyway. “Please just talk to me, then. I want to help you, and I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,”

 

Iszabella clenched her jaw until it hurt and she felt dizzy. She didn’t want to talk. She’d do anything but talk. More tears dripped down her cheeks, making little wet spots on her pillow. 

 

“At least stop crying. I don’t like seeing you cry,”

 

That was easier said than done. There was a spark of something angry inside Iszabella and she suddenly wanted to shove Gilbert away. She wasn’t angry at him, though. She was angry at herself because she had messed up and he had had to see it happen. She was angry that she’d dragged someone else into this when she was perfectly fine with dealing with it herself.

 

“Seriously. I’m going to get Elizavetha if you won’t just talk about it with me. I’m really worried about you, if you don’t get better, this… this could kill you,” he swallowed and smoothed out the blanket he was sitting on, trying to make eye contact with Iszabella. She was half sitting up, half laying down, with her head turned to the side so she was staring at the wall.

 

“I’m so fucking sick of you! Just leave me alone!”

 

She didn’t actually feel that way. She didn’t want him to leave and when she felt Gilbert’s comforting weight leave the end of his bed and heard him start to walk away, Iszabella suddenly kicked off the covers and sat up and grabbed him by the wrist. 

 

Gilbert turned around, looking down at his roommate’s hand clutching at his sleeve. Her fingers weren’t slim and elegant like they appeared to be from far away. He could see each one of her bones and the skin of her knuckles was scarred with little marks that had to have come from biting down while forcing herself to throw up. Even though he already knew she was sick and that anorexia had left her as nothing more than a shell of herself, it felt more jarring to see up close what the disease could do to someone. 

 

“Are you ready to talk to me?” Any semblance of impatience or annoyance was gone from Gilbert’s voice completely. He returned to the bed and sat down on the edge, next to Iszabella. She’d let go of his sleeve but he could still tell she wanted him to be close by. 

 

“Everything was just so overwhelming, and I thought that would make me feel better,”

 

“I thought you were done with that stuff. I thought you were getting better,”

 

“I want to get better so bad, but it’s so hard. I’m not myself anymore. I don’t know who I am, I can’t control myself, it’s like there’s someone inside me pushing me around,”

 

“Please stop crying,” Gilbert turned towards Iszabella and reached over to wipe tears away from her face with his thumb. His voice was gentle this time, because it hurt somewhere deep in his chest to see someone who could make him smile and laugh with just a few words be reduced to this. Even though he knew telling her not to cry probably wouldn’t work, he’d try anyway, because he was at least letting her know that he preferred when she was happy.

 

“I can’t.” Her lip was trembling a little and she bit down on it, so hard that the skin beneath her teeth flushed white. 

 

“I know,” he sighed and let Iszabella come closer to him, until the sides of their legs were touching and he could feel the restless nervousness bottled up inside her. “Maybe you just need to cry it out. I’m here if you want to do that too,” he relented. 

 

She just nodded in reply and leaned against him, shoulders and chest shaking with every silent sob.

 

They seemed to go on forever, and there was an ache of exhaustion settling in Gilbert’s bones, but he wouldn’t be able to rest until Iszabella was alright. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to take all of her pain and sadness away. She didn’t deserve the burden of it on her shoulders.

 

“You can go back to sleep. I think I’m alright now,” Iszabella’s voice was heavy with the aftereffects of sadness. She wasn’t shaking anymore, just sitting and blinking heavy eyelids. In the small amount of light trickling in from the hallway, Gilbert could see the shine of teardrops on her eyelashes. 

 

“If you need me, you can wake me up. You shouldn’t have to go through this alone,” he got up and took a few steps over to his own bed, sitting down in front of his pillows and stretching out his legs so he could kick the sheets back up.

 

There were a few moments of just complete silence, before a small voice came from Gilbert’s left. “Thank you, you didn’t have to do that,”

 

“It’s no problem. I don’t like seeing you hurt,”

 

That was the last thing he said before they both turned over, facing away from each other as always, and fell asleep.

 

When morning came and a loud banging on the door forced him to get up and start getting ready for the day, Gilbert started thinking about what had happened during the night. Part of him didn’t know if it had been real, since his memory of it was similar to a memory of a dream, but he could see Iszabella wearing two sweatshirts and the indent he’d made from sitting on the edge of her bed, and that was enough to tell him it had happened.

 

They didn’t talk much while they got ready, since Iszabella didn’t have anything to say and Gilbert was usually at his most irritable in the morning. By now, they had a bit of a routine; they’d both get dressed and walk down to breakfast together, where Elizavetha would meet them at the table. After they ate, Gilbert would go off to group therapy and Iszabella and Elizavetha would find somewhere to be where there weren’t many other people. 

 

This morning, though, as they went through the breakfast line, Gilbert decided to change their routine. “Hey, Iszabella, you should come with me to group this morning,” he said, somewhat careful because he already knew she’d say no. Even though attending the meetings could help her leave sooner, she refused. There was no way she’d voluntarily put herself with a large group of men, even if there were therapists and nurses overseeing it all.

 

“I’m not doing it,” she mumbled, pulling her tray back when a cafeteria worker tried to put sausage on it. He dropped it anyway and it landed in a pile of hash browns towards the edge of her plate.

 

“Why not?” he knew the answer to this question as well, but Gilbert would fight back until he got Iszabella to at least think about coming.

 

“Because I don’t want to be around all those people,”

 

“I’ll be there. I’ll even sit with you in the back if you want,”

 

“I’m still not doing it,”

 

“Why not?” Gilbert poured himself a generous bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, and Iszabella gave it a disgusted look. A few years ago she would have gladly taken cereal for herself as well, but all she could think about now was how many calories were in it and how bad the stuff was for her.

 

“Because I’ll have to talk,”

 

“You just have to say your name and a goal you have for the day. I can even talk for you,”

 

“Why are you like, so determined to get me to come with you?”

 

“Because I think it’ll make you feel better,”

 

“Is this about last night?”

 

Iszabella didn’t even bother to hide the hurt in her voice. She’d thought they had come to some sort of unspoken agreement not to bring that up ever again and to pretend like it never happened.

 

“Yes,” Gilbert admitted, deciding it was better to be honest. He waited for Iszabella to get a cup of water, before walking with her to their usual table by the window in the back corner. 

 

“Just shut up already,”

 

They walked in silence and when Iszabella set her tray down, it was a little too forceful. With her fork, she stabbed at the sausage she hadn’t wanted in the first place, pushing it into her hash browns as though that would hide it. Her stomach was turning somersaults.

 

“Seriously, Iszabella, I want you to come. I didn’t want to do it at first, but when I went there, it felt really good to know there are other people who have the same problems I do,”

 

“So you’re saying there’s gonna be someone else who got dragged across the world and raped?” Iszabella’s voice was quiet, but there was no mistaking the rage in it. 

 

“No, I’m not, but there’s got to be people who have trauma and shit,”

 

There wasn’t a response. Iszabella just pushed things around on her plate, drowning them in ketchup and watching the red blossom like blood. She squeezed her eyes shut as she forced down a forkful. The rest of the meal was silent, except for Elizavetha’s few attempts at conversation when she came to sit with them. Once Gilbert had finished, he sat back and sipped his coffee as he waited for Iszabella. Watching her eat was difficult because she always had a scowl on her face and something pained in her eyes, and he was constantly reminded of her hugging the toilet the night before.

 

“So, Izzy, do you want to just hang out in your room after you eat? I got some more magazines for you, I think there’s something with horses in one of them,”

 

Iszabella looked up at Elizavetha for a second, frowning a little as she thought. She’d been thinking throughout the entire meal, running over what Gilbert had said. No, she didn’t want to go to group therapy at all, but there was really no reason not to, since he had said he’d talk for her and she figured it was more about listening to others than focusing on oneself. It would give her something to do, and maybe it would make her feel better, even if she couldn’t relate to anyone there. After all, they did all share the common position of being stuck in a psychiatric hospital.

 

Finally, after a little while of thinking, Iszabella shook her head. “No, I think I’m going to the group thing with Gilbert.”


	10. 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again lovely people! I always have a hard time writing the notes at the beginning because in my head I want to sound like I'm talking to the readers and I want to come across all friendly, but when I actually start typing, I feel kind of childish. As I wrote this, I was working on the next chapter of Stretching The Truth, and I noticed that my writing there was much better than it is here. I think my writing on this story isn't the best because it's very dialogue heavy and doesn't go much into the characters' thoughts or actions. Hopefully I'll improve as I go! 
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who is reading my stuff, you all are the absolute best and it makes me feel lots better about my writing!
> 
> This chapter has a trigger warning for talking about eating disorders.

“Come on, I bet the scar looks cool. You can show it off and say you got it by doing something awesome like fighting a tiger,” Gilbert said, reaching over to grab at Iszabella’s sleeve and lift it up. She swatted at him, the corners of her lips twitching as she fought back a smile.

 

“I’m not gonna like, lie to people about how I broke my arm,”

 

“But the truth is boring. Now come on, let me see it,” he gently nudged Iszabella’s hand away and she surrendered, tugging her sleeve up. Her cast had gone all the way up to her elbow, but now just her wrist and part of her forearm were covered with a brace. The end of a scar poked out of it, in a neat line with little raised dashes on the sides where she’d had stitches. “See, it looks cool.”

 

“It does not look cool,” Iszabella pushed her sleeve back down and shifted so her shoulder was against the wall and she was facing Gilbert. “And that doesn’t either,” she pointed at the coloring page he was working on, where he was scribbling in red all over a Disney princess, trying to make it look as though she was covered in blood.

 

“What? My therapist said I should work on getting out some of my anger,”

 

“I don’t think this is what he was going for. And like, she’s a princess, so she’s supposed to be pretty, not gross and bloody,”

 

“Some of Henry the Eighth’s wives were princesses and they got their heads chopped off, which is pretty gross and bloody if you ask me,”

 

Iszabella rolled her eyes and picked up a light pink colored pencil, leaning over to start coloring in the princess’s skirt. “They probably still looked pretty when they died. If you’re gonna make her all bloody, you should show her some respect and at least make her look nice,”

 

Gilbert laughed and put back the red pencil, finding a blue one. He started coloring in the top of her dress, much more neatly than he had when he’d been scribbling bloodstains all over. There was quiet for a little, just the sound of scratching pencils and the light chatter of some of the other patients in the room, before he spoke up again. “I’m leaving in a few days. My therapist thinks I’m alright to go back to my life as long as I keep going to appointments every few days,”

 

“Oh.” Iszabella paused for a moment, thinking over what she’d been told. “So what are you gonna do when you get out?”

 

“Well, first I’m going for a beer. Then I’m visiting my little brother. I think those are the two things I missed most,” he set down the colored pencil on top of the coloring sheet and ran a hand through his hair. “Then I’m starting my classes back up again and hopefully I didn’t lose my job while I was in here. My dad will help me pay for stuff until I get back on my feet, so I’m not too worried about that,”

 

“That’s good,” 

 

“I’ll give you my phone number, so you can text me when you get out and I can take you on a date,” Gilbert gave a sly grin, which made his roommate’s cheeks turn red. 

 

“I seriously thought you were joking about that,”

 

“No, I wasn’t! C’mon, you need to have an awesome date with an awesome guy so you can know what to look for in your future husband,”

 

“Fine. One date… as friends,” the only reason Iszabella accepted was because she knew Gilbert was a decent person, and would continue to be once he was out of the hospital. She felt comfortable around him and it was nice to have another friend she could turn to.

 

“So, tell me, what are you gonna do when you’re out, other than go on a date with me?” Gilbert asked. By now the coloring page had been set down on the floor by his side.

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m really going to get out,” she admitted.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Tino was talking to me about my goals and stuff, and like, he said he wants to get me in a residential treatment center. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to go back to living with Toris. I guess I’d be able to do more than I get to here, but I won’t really be out,”

 

“Well he probably has a good reason to want you to go there,”

 

“I guess,” Iszabella frowned. “I just kinda feel like I failed. I can’t function out in society like everyone else,”

 

“It’s not your fault,” Gilbert reached out and gently brushed his fingers against the side of her hand for just a moment before pulling away. It wasn’t a big gesture, but it was enough to tell her that he was there for her.

 

“I know. I just… everything was going so well before it happened. I was getting good grades, I was looking at cosmetology school, I had a future, and then it all just went away,”

 

Gilbert could tell that Iszabella was dangerously close to tears. He’d learned to read her body language, and she was starting to curl her legs closer to her chest, ready to close herself off. “It’s not too late for those things to happen. You can still go back to school. You can still do everything you want to, I promise. I mean, I just started school over and I’m twenty,”

 

“Yeah, I know. I want to go back to school. Not high school, I just want to start cosmetology school or something so I can get a job. I want to be able to pay for a sex change operation,” she smiled a little, crossing her legs so she wasn’t curling up anymore. Toris had told her that he would have to dip into the money she had been saving for her transition, since her hospital bills were increasing more and more as the days went by. She was unhappy about it, but it also gave her more motivation to start working and earning money.

 

“If that’s what you want, you can do it,”

 

By now, Gilbert could definitely see that Iszabella was smiling. Whenever she smiled, he swore he could see the person she must have been before everything had happened. It made her look healthier and less worn out. When she wasn’t smiling, though, he found that he lingered for too long on how her skin was almost translucent and her hair dull and thin. He wished he could reach out and magically fix her because it was disturbing to see another person, especially one he considered a friend, look so fragile and sick. 

 

“Yeah, I will,” she said, nodding just to emphasize it. Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world that she would need to go into residential treatment, because like Gilbert had said, it wasn’t too late to go to school or get a job. “Tino said there’s places where they have therapy with horses, and like, he’d see if I could go to one of those,”

 

“So you can talk to people there about horses and they’ll actually understand what you’re talking about,”

 

Iszabella snorted and swatted Gilbert’s shoulder again. “You would understand what I’m talking about if you didn’t zone out as soon as I open my mouth,”

 

“I can’t help it! I couldn’t care less about the difference between a horse and a pony, or whatever else you’re going on about. You’d probably feel the same way if I suddenly started explaining how car engines work,”

 

“Yeah, that’s true. But that’s because cars are complicated. Horses aren’t complicated, you just don’t like to listen to me,” she pouted and Gilbert sighed, rolling his eyes.

 

“You know, I can’t take you seriously when you look at me like that,”

 

“Like what?” she continued pouting, now at the point where she didn’t realize she was even doing it.

 

“Like that! You’re all pouty, you look like a kid who really wants their mother to buy them a toy,”

 

“Toris would say the same thing,” she rolled her eyes and forced herself to stop the expression.

 

Gilbert smirked, but it fell as he remembered what she’d said earlier about Tino not thinking it was a good idea for her to go back to living with Toris. He didn’t want to ruin the moment and go back to a serious conversation, but he was also curious. “Hey, can I ask you a question?” he asked, deciding to ease his way towards it.

 

“I guess,”

 

“Why didn’t Tino think it was a good idea for you to keep living with Toris?”

 

Iszabella sighed and stared down at her hands folded in her lap. “I’m too dependent on him. And he’s not good for my eating disorder,” she mumbled the last part, turning away from Gilbert to say she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. That never worked with him, though.

 

“You can talk to me,”

 

She nodded, because as much as she hated to admit it, that was true. There was something about Gilbert, about how he always pushed a little with his questions and spoke gently to her but never down to her, that got her to talk. And she knew she’d feel better afterwards, even if it would take a few hours or even days for the relief to come.

 

“It took him a really long time to figure out that something was wrong, and when he did he got really angry at me and just blew up. He like, bottles things up and then little things set him off a lot, and this was a big thing so…” Iszabella suddenly got very interested in a patch of carpeting and picked at it. She knew she had to keep talking, though, and a gentle nudge to her shoulder from Gilbert got her to pick up where she’d left off. “I started getting really good at hiding what I was doing because I was scared he’d get mad again, and we started having these huge fights, like I wouldn’t talk to him for days. I wanted to stop, I really did, but every time we fought I just felt like the only thing I had left was diets and stuff, and I just let it get worse,”

 

Gilbert let out a heavy sigh. “That sucks too. You’re gonna get better, though, you’re already doing really well,”

 

“It’s different than depression or something like that. I’ll never really get better, I-” she paused before reaching over to grab Gilbert’s hand. She set his hand on her chest, over her heart, and laid her hand over his. 

 

For a moment, there was silence, and Iszabella was terrified, before she saw the look in Gilbert’s eyes change from confusion to fear. “Your heart’s not beating right! It’s beating but it’s not the right rhythm!” 

 

“Yeah, I know,” Iszabella pulled her hand away and let Gilbert’s fall back. She looked down, and when she met his eyes again, hers were filled with tears. “It’s not just my heart, it’s my bones and the way hormones are working with my body, and I feel so stupid because I knew I was hurting myself and I knew I needed to stop, but I didn’t and now I’ve fucked myself over forever,”

 

Gilbert didn’t know what to say. Something in the back of his mind had always told him that Iszabella’s problems weren’t going to be gone once she was discharged, but he hadn’t expected just how much it would affect her. He hated watching her cry, so he reached out and brushed his hand against hers once again, just to give some sort of support.

 

“I want to get better now, though. I don’t want things to get worse,” she turned her hand over so her palm was up and it pressed against Gilbert’s. She wasn’t actually holding his hand, but the contact was enough to tell her that he cared about her. 

 

“I want you to get better. And you’re gonna, because you’re really fucking brave,” he replied, giving a slight smile.


End file.
